Twenty years ago, when the late Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed the notion of innovative schools operating outside conventional district bureaucracies, his aim was to put teachers at the helm. Fast-forward two decades from Shanker's then-radical proposition and there are nearly 80 teacher-governed charter schools around the country. Although most are legally constituted as worker cooperatives, they better resemble the partnerships long enjoyed by doctors, lawyers, and other professionals used to viewing their practice as a collective good. Teachers in co-op schools are often less interested in test scores than in the model's potential for creating cultures that hang onto kids who might otherwise get lost in the cracks. Because they are the administrators, they can adjust lessons to each student's needs. If something isn't working, they have their partners' expertise to draw on. This article describes the Minnesota New Country School and the School for Urban Planning and Architecture (SUPAR) where teachers organize as a worker cooperative or nonprofit to run schools collaboratively, sharing leadership tasks. (Contains 1 figure.)