The strange death of education reform, part three

What worked and what didn't in charter schools

This is the third of an ongoing series; part one is here and part two is here. And a related guest post is here. Also — if you’re in or near Chicago tomorrow, come hang out at an informal Slow Boring happy hour starting at 5:30 p.m. at Radio Room, 400 North State Street.

One question I got from a lot of conservatives following the initial installments in this series is why am I overcomplicating things instead of just saying that teachers unions are bad.

The reason is that I think what we’ve learned from charter schools tends to debunk the strong critique of teachers unions.

Now to be clear, the charter experience does force what I would call the narrow critique of teachers unions — that in specific cases where doing something bad for the union would almost certainly be good for students, the union (like almost any institution) instead does what’s good for the union.

But the strong criticism of teachers unions is that collective bargaining is such a pernicious force in the public educatio…