Unionized Charter Schools 2016-17

Public Charters:

In 2010, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (National Alliance) collected data to determine the teachers’ union status of every charter school nationwide. Prior to the release of the 2010 report, the number of unionized charter schools was largely unknown. In 2009-10, the National Alliance reported that roughly 12 percent of charter schools participated in collective bargaining agreements with teachers’ unions. In the years since the 2010 report, union votes at several charter schools in Illinois, Louisiana, and Washington, DC received significant media attention, raising questions about whether a growing number of charter schools were unionizing. To examine whether there has been a growth in unionized charter schools, the National Alliance collected data from the 2016-17 school year. The national data from 2009-10 and 2016-17 are presented in Table 1. The state data from 2009-10 and 2016-17 are presented in Table 2. D