Michael Charney: Teacher, Activist, Comrade

Rethinking Schools mourns the passing of Michael Charney: teacher, organizer, advocate, author, and longtime friend and supporter. Michael died on Jan. 2, 2026, after a heart attack at the age of 75. 

Michael was a larger-than-life personality with boundless energy and an infectious laugh. He was warm, funny, imaginative, curious about everything, and brought a bundle of ideas to every conversation. As his friend journalist Scott Stephens wrote, Michael “devoted the majority of his 75 years to changing the lives of others. Through thousands of classroom lessons, impassioned union hall speeches, and testimony in the Ohio Statehouse, Charney spent most of his waking hours making a difference.”

Born March 31, 1950, in Worcester, Massachusetts, Michael moved to Cleveland, where he pursued a more than 30-year career as a public school teacher, union activist, and organizer for social justice. He met his wife, C. J. Prentiss, in the 1970s when both worked on community efforts to integrate Cleveland-area schools. C. J., who passed away in April 2024, went on to become a public official, a member of the Ohio State Board of Education, an assemblywoman, and a state senator. Last fall she was posthumously elected to the Ohio Civil Rights Hall of Fame. Throughout their 43-year marriage Michael and C. J. formed a dynamic partnership for social justice. 

Michael and C. J. first connected with Rethinking Schools at a convening of activist teachers and parents in Lisle, Illinois, in 1988. The gathering, which Michael helped organize, eventually led to the formation of the National Coalition of Education Activists (NCEA), a multiracial network of parents, teachers, and union activists working for progressive, anti-racist school reform. Michael was a key member and C. J. was an early co-chair for NCEA, which nurtured lasting ties among education activists from varied locales and constituencies.

Throughout his long career as an activist, Michael’s insights as an organizer and political strategist strengthened groups like NCEA. “My real career goal,” he once said, “was to find a way to organize massive social change. I rejected the idea of working on a cause. I was never really into causes. I was into strategies and figuring out how causes interacted.”

Charney worked for more than three decades in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District — as a public school social studies teacher, and vice president of the Cleveland Teachers Union. Charney also was the union’s professional issues director and helped launch the Cleveland Teachers Academy, a professional development project.

Much of Michael’s political work was in support of C. J.’s political campaigns and legislative initiatives. Both were active in Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition campaigns for president in 1984 and 1988 and in 2016, he and Prentiss were delegates for Bernie Sanders at the Democratic National Convention.

Michael and C. J. also devoted efforts to developing new generations of activist leadership. At the height of the Rainbow Coalition, Michael developed the concept of the Future Leaders Summer Camp. For 10 years, activist high school students came together for summer activities, political workshops, and strategy sessions. The project was co-sponsored by the National Committee for Independent Political Action and New African Voices from Philadelphia.

Michael also played a key role in creating Ohio Youth Voices, which brought high school students from throughout the state to develop an Ohio Youth Agenda and work on economic justice issues

Prentiss and Charney  played a major role in launching the nonpartisan economic policy research institute Policy Matters Ohio to “create a more vibrant, equitable, sustainable, and inclusive Ohio through research, strategic communications, coalition building, and policy advocacy.” Charney and Prentiss were both on the founding board of directors as Policy Matters worked to raise the minimum wage, restore collective bargaining rights to public sector workers, and fund Ohio’s public schools. More than 25 years later, Policy Matters remains a crucial voice for Ohio’s working people.

The duo also created the C. J. Prentiss Emerging Leaders Project, designed to develop the skills of progressive leaders under 40. Its graduates include national leaders such as former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner and Stacey Abrams’ campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo.

In the classroom, Michael was a dynamic teacher. As Scott Stephens wrote in a tribute, “Years later, many of Charney’s former students said he was the one teacher who had changed their lives.”

Charney helped write curriculum guides to support student organizing, including Fulfilling the Promise of America: The Struggle for Voting Rights, The Minimum Wage and the Youth Vote, and The Present as History: A Look into the Origins of the Cleveland School Desegregation Case.

Michael’s decades-long collaboration with Rethinking Schools and our Zinn Education Project, co-facilitated with Teaching for Change, gave rise to multiple projects with lasting impact. 

In 2021, he co-edited the Rethinking Schools book Teacher Unions and Social Justice: Organizing for the Schools and Communities Our Students Deserve with Jesse Hagopian and Bob Peterson. This was a revised edition of Transforming Teacher Unions: Fighting for Better Schools and Social Justice that he co-edited in 1999. 

In addition to numerous published articles, Charney frequently wrote “dispatches” that he shared with colleagues around the country. For example, while a convention delegate for the Sanders campaign in 2016, Charney offered everyone on his email list a ringside seat with insights and analysis.

In any conversation with Charney, it would not take long before he raised the Reconstruction era of U.S. history. He appreciated the example it offered of an interracial coalition that brought public education, the right to vote, and other progressive policies to people of all races.

Charney used creative strategies to raise awareness about key people in the Reconstruction era, such as the Radical Republican congressman Thaddeus Stevens. For example, he explained, “We named our dog Thaddeus. When I walked my dog, people would ask me what’s his name, and I’d say ‘Thaddeus.’ When they looked puzzled, I would say ‘Named for Thaddeus Stevens.’ 

‘Who’s that?’ they would ask.” This was Michael’s opening to enlighten them about Stevens, with his unflinching commitment to both racial and economic equality for the newly freed people. (Thaddeus was eventually succeeded by a new pet named Thurgood.)

Charney was also a lead funder for the Gettysburg statue of Thaddeus Stevens, dedicated in April of 2022. In his moving speech at the dedication, Charney emphasized the importance of the 14th Amendment and recognizing freedom fighters in every community. 

Fiercely dedicated to the cause of young people learning about Reconstruction and recognizing that most school districts gave short shrift to the era, Charney funded and guided the Zinn Education Project’s Teach Reconstruction campaign in 2016 with lessons and workshops.

In 2020, Charney focused attention on the 150th anniversary of the 15th Amendment, offering mini-grants to teachers for school-based projects.

Once the campaign caught on, he urged us to build on its efforts to provide teaching resources for individual teachers by ensuring that Reconstruction was embedded in the curriculum. Toward that end, he provided the core funding for a national report on teaching about Reconstruction. Our Zinn Education Project released this comprehensive, two-year study of state standards, Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle, in January 2022.

When teachers organized Teach Truth Days of Action to challenge laws suppressing the teaching of honest history, Charney showed up annually at every rally he could get to. 

Charney recognized the need for grassroots leadership to sustain education activism, which led to the creation of the Zinn Education Project Prentiss Charney Fellowship. The program provides stipends, teaching resources, and study group support to teacher activists. Charney met with each of the two cohorts that have been selected to date. He offered advice and in return felt encouraged by the dedication and creativity of the fellows.

Recognition and Reflections

In 2018, Charney received the Teaching People’s History Award from the Zinn Education Project.

When his wife and political partner C. J. Prentiss died in April of 2024, Charney did all he could to honor her memory and carry on her legacy. This included continued support for the Prentiss Charney Fellowship and launching the C. J. Prentiss Education Resource Center.

Along with Prentiss’ sons, Charney organized a celebration of her life for people from around the country in July of 2024.

A similar celebration of Michael’s life will be held at a future date. 

In Memory We invite you to honor the memory of Michael Charney by donating to the Zinn Education Project campaigns he inspired, Teach Reconstruction and Prentiss Charney Fellows. You can also vote in your local school board election or consider running for office. In the spirit of the Thaddeus Stevens statue, shine a light on local heroes. Give gift subscriptions of Rethinking Schools magazine to teachers. Teach outside the textbook. Charney’s years of activism suggest endless possibilities. As his colleague Amy Hanauer said, “I’ll remember his refusal to conform, his boundless energy, and his willingness to give his short bark of derisive laughter at the latest outrage. He was always on the outside, always pushing, and somehow always hopeful despite the evidence.”