Can charter schools coexist with teachers unions and perhaps even provide innovative models for shaping productive new union contracts? In this chapter, Mitch Price considers such questions. Drawing on early lessons from a CRPE study, Price assesses whether charter unionization is a growing trend, outlines the reasons that charter schools unionize, and describes the potential ways that individual charters can balance unionization and mission. He concludes that: “Charter unionization is not one concept; rather, there are different things going on in different schools motivated by different reasons and yielding different results.”
