One of the gospels of the Oregon Education Association is: Thou shalt not threaten our union monopoly on public education.

You can see the manifestation of it in the teachers union’s attempt to bully charter schools. The union is pushing a bill, Senate Bill 621, that would make charter schools more difficult to run and roll back their independence.

The bill would require that 65 percent of the teachers in Oregon’s charter schools have Oregon tea-ching licenses.The law at present only requires 50 percent of the teachers to have state licenses.

“Licensure is important. We require all teachers in regular schools to be licensed. I think a 65 percent licensure standard is hardly a standard at all,” state Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, one of the bill’s sponsors, told The Oregonian.

Before you start nodding your head in agreement, think about what charter schools are all about. They are public schools and get public funding. But they operate on a contract with the state or a district. They don’t have to abide by all the regulations that traditional public schools do. They are given this freedom to create competition, choice for parents and students, and promote innovation in the public schools. Requiring charter schools to hire more teachers with state licenses marches them right back into what they are trying to be different from. It’s no surprise that originally Walker’s bill proposed 100 percent of charter school teachers should have state licenses.

Charter schools irk the teachers union. Many teachers feel charters divert resources that would be better spent in the traditional public schools.

Indeed, there is nothing necessarily magical about charter schools and their ability to improve public education. But we all know that monopolies stifle innovation and experimentation. Charters promote it. The last thing the Legislature should be doing is bullying charters.