Giving Compass' Take:

• Teachers who work for online schools are also participating in the teacher strikes, but are fighting against their investors for more focus on strengthening digital educational tools rather than profit-oriented goals. 

• What are the main similarities between the demands of teachers in the virtual movement and teachers outside of it? What are the main differences? How can collaboration help in this situation?

• Catch up on the recent teacher walkouts in states like Kentucky and Oklahoma and learn about the demands of overworked and underpaid educators. 

When West Virginia teachers initiated a nine-day labor strike this past winter, they secured national attention and a 5 percent pay raise. Oklahoma and Kentucky educators followed suit, with Arizona teachers threatening to do the same. Amid all this organizing was another strike threat, not previously reported, last week in California: between teachers in online classrooms and the organization that employs them.

Students enrolled in virtual schools (sometimes called “cyber schools” or “virtual academies”) take their classes online. It’s a small phenomenon, representing less than 1 percent of students, but a fast-growing one. Education experts have been concerned by the growth of virtual K-12 education, especially virtual charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately managed.

The negotiations represent an important test case of how educators might wield power in a future where online education becomes even more common. According to Brianna Carroll, a high-school social-science teacher in Livermore, California, and president of the teachers’ union, bargaining had been slow-going, especially in recent weeks, when negotiators hit an impasse over class size.

While virtual schools across the country face some of the same struggles roiling traditional public schools. Virtual teachers also have to reckon with a newer threat: the involvement of for-profit companies that seek to deliver profits to their investors.

Cava, for instance, is a nonprofit network, but its operations are deeply intertwined with K12 Inc., a publicly traded company based in Virginia. Cava teachers say they organized a union in part to push back on K12’s corporate influence over their schools. “For so long it’s been focused on how to use this charter-school concept to turn a dollar, rather than how to use online tools to support more students,” said Carroll, the union president. “We’re really using the union to push cava to have different goals.”

Read the full article about teachers virtual strike by Rachel M. Cohen at The Atlantic