Delegates to the National Education Association Representative Assembly last week approved a policy statement on charter schools that aims to limit the growth of charter schools and regulate the schools more closely.

While NEA officials hailed the decision as a “fundamental shift” in the union’s stance on charter schools, Mike Antonucci looks back at an earlier NEA statement on unions and finds the same hostility.

All you need to know about NEA’s position on charter schools is actually contained in the original 2001 policy, which states that charters should not exist “simply to provide a ‘choice’ for parents who may be dissatisfied with the education that their children are receiving in mainstream public schools.”

Mike Antonucci wrote about tensions within the NEA for the Winter 2015 issue of Education Next.

— Education Next