Teachers unions and student performance: Help or hindrance?

Future of Children

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 175-200

  Eberts, Randall W ^a  

^a WE Upjohn Institute for Employment Research   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT; ARTICLE; COMPENSATION; COST; DECISION MAKING; ECONOMIC ASPECT; EDUCATION; EMPLOYMENT; FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT; GOVERNMENT; HUMAN; LAW; PROFESSIONAL STANDARD; QUALITY CONTROL; RESPONSIBILITY; STANDARDIZATION; STUDENT; TEACHER; UNITED STATES; WORK ENVIRONMENT;

EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT; HUMANS; LABOR UNIONS; LEARNING; NEGOTIATING; SCHOOLS; STUDENTS; TEACHING; UNITED STATES;

EID: 34248340979     PISSN: 10548289     EISSN: 15501558     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/foc.2007.0001     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. According to a Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll (September 2003), 75 percent of respondents favored reforming the existing system, whereas 23 percent favored promoting alternative systems.
2. Helen Raham, "Teacher Bargaining Today and Tomorrow," School Business Affairs 65, no. 4 (1999): 24-27.
3. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education (U.S. Department of Education, 1983).
4. Robert Chase, "The New NEA: Reinventing Teachers Unions for a New Era," remarks before the National Press Club, Washington, February 5, 1997, www.nea.org/nr/sp970205.html (March 11, 2002).
5. John Dunlop, Industrial Relations System (New York: Holt, 1958).
6. Sewall Gilbert, "Teachers' Unions and the Issue of Academic Standards," Wall Street Journal, January 6, 1983.
7. Harry H. Wellington and Ralph K. Winter, "The Limits of Collective Bargaining in Public Employment," Yale Law Journal 77, no. 7 (1969).
8. To estimate union representation, I used the Outgoing Rotation Group of the Current Population Survey (CPS) for the years 1996-2005. I included a decade of data to ensure a large enough sample. Teachers were defined as local government employees who had occupation codes 155-59 for the period 1996-2002 and occupation codes 2300-40 in 2003-05. Following Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson, "Union Membership and Coverage Files from the Current Population Surveys: Note," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 46, no. 3 (April 1993): 574-78, I consider two questions from the CPS. One question relates to membership: "On this job are you a member of a labor union or of an employee association similar to a union?" Those who answered no to this question were asked: "On this job, are you covered by a union or employees association contract?" Therefore, the inference from the first question is that those answering yes are members of a union or employee association that negotiates a contract and are covered under that collective bargaining contract.
9. Nationally, 61 percent report that they are members of a union and another 6 percent report that they are not members but are covered under a collective bargaining agreement. Interestingly, the two regions with the lowest percentage of membership and coverage - East South Central and West South Central - have the highest percentage of teachers who are covered but not members (11 percent and 10 percent, respectively). Of course, since this is self-reporting, there may be biases in the responses, as discussed by Edward C. Kokkelenberg and Donna R. Sockell, "Union Membership in the United States, 1973-81," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 38, no. 4 (July 1985): 497-543.
10. Bruce S. Cooper, "Collective Bargaining, Strikes, and Financial Costs in Public Education: A Comparative Review" (Clearinghouse on Educational Management, University of Oregon, 1982).
11. Ibid.;
12. and Steve M. Goldschmidt, "An Overview of the Evolution of Collective Bargaining and Its Impact on Education," Proceedings of a Conference on the Effects of Collective Bargaining on School Administrative Leadership (University of Oregon, Center for Educational Policy and Management, 1982).
13. The turning point may have been AFT's major victory in organizing New York City teachers in 1961. M.O. Donley Jr., Power to the Teacher: How America's Educators Became Militant (Indiana University Press, 1976), describes it as probably the biggest single success in the history of teacher organizing in the United States.
14. Susan Moore Johnson and Susan M. Kardos, "Reform Bargaining and Its Promise for School Improvement," in Conflicting Missions? Teachers Unions and Educational Reform, edited by Tom Loveless (Brookings, 2000), pp. 7-46.
15. Chase, "The New NEA" (see note 4).
16. This section relies heavily on Randall W. Eberts and Joe A. Stone, Unions and Public Schools: The Effect of Collective Bargaining on American Education (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1984).
17. While this research examines the effects of teacher collective bargaining during the late 1970s, its relevance to more current times is supported by more recent research that follows similar methodology and finds similar results. Dan Goldhaber, "Are Teachers Unions Good for Students?" in Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools, edited by Joan Hannaway and Andrew Rotherham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press, 2006), pp. 141-57, in a recent review of the literature of the effects of teacher collective bargaining on student achievement, states that "there is relatively little research that directly links unionization and student achievement" (p.142).
18. Furthermore, there is even less research that attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the various aspects of teachers unions and the multiple ways in which collective bargaining may affect student achievement. A reasonable benchmark to determine teachers' success at the bargaining table is the private sector. Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff, What Do Unions Do? (New York: Basic Books, 1984), offer a useful perspective from the effects of unions in the private sector on pay and benefits, working conditions, cost of instruction, and productivity.
19. For instance, a provision on class size is found in many contracts and allowed by state laws. However, whether class size is a district average or a cap on any specific class, and the action taken after the class size limit has been exceeded, depends on the strength of the local union in negotiating those provisions. The enforcement of class size restrictions varies across bargaining units. For example, Susan Moore Johnson and Morgaen Donaldson, "The Effects of Collective Bargaining on Teacher Quality," in Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools, edited by Hannaway and Rotherham (see note 14), pp. 111-40, report that the collective bargaining agreement in Branford, Connecticut, requires a new class after class size is exceeded by more than two students, whereas the teacher contract in Lowell, Massachusetts, states that the administration will work in good faith to reduce class size when contracts become available.
20. Henry Farber, "Union Membership in the United States: The Divergence between the Public and Private Sectors," in Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools, edited by Hannaway and Rotherham (see note 14), pp. 27-51.
21. Heather Rose and Jon Sonstelie, "School Board Politics, School District Size, and the Bargaining Power of Teachers Unions," Working Paper (San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, May 2006), hypothesize that teachers unions will be more powerful in large districts than in small ones. Their analysis of California school districts shows that the salaries of teachers, as a measure of a union's success in collective bargaining, are positively related to the number of eligible voters in the jurisdiction.
22. Paul Courant and others, "Public Employee Market Power and the Level of Government Spending," American Economic Review 69, no. 5 (1979): 806-17, show that in states where local school districts may raise their own tax revenues by raising local taxes, teachers unions may also use their political power to encourage local voters to support tax increases.
23. On the other hand, Daniel Hoskins and David Margolis, "The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools," Working Paper (U.S. Federal Trade Commission, December 1997), find that teachers unions operating in areas where school boards must have their budget approved by popular referendum tend to have significantly lower bargaining power than their counterparts in which the budget is implemented without being subject to public approval.
24. As a labor organization, a teachers union is not permitted to use member dues for political actions. However, members can voluntarily contribute to a political action committee, which is typically set up by the state affiliate of the local bargaining units for the purpose of political activism and fundraising to elect candidates who share the same goals as the teachers union. For example, the political action committee of the Michigan Education Association, the NEA-affiliated teachers union in Michigan, collected $1 million from 25,000 of its 160,000 members during the first half of 2006, an election year.
25. Eberts and Stone, Unions and Public Schools (see note 14).
26. William H. Baugh and Joe A. Stone, "Teachers, Unions, and Wages in the 1970s: Unionism Now Pays," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 35 (1982): 368-6;
27. and Caroline M. Hoxby, "How Teachers Unions Affect Education Production," Quarterly Journal of Economics 111 (1996): 671-718.
28. Morris Kleiner and D. L. Petree, "Unionism and Licensing of Public School Teachers: Impact on Wages and Educational Output," in When Public Sector Workers Unionize, edited by Richard B. Freeman and Casey Ichniowski (University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 305-19, find only a small differential, but rely on aggregate data with few controls.
29. Evidence in sectors other than education suggests that pay and fringe benefits for union workers typically exceed those of nonunion workers. While the magnitude of the differential can vary from one sector to another, Freeman and Medoff, What Do Unions Do? (see note 14), pp. 47, 67-68, find that the union pay differential is typically 8 to 10 percent higher for "identical" workers and the differential for fringe benefits is even higher.
30. Eberts and Stone, Unions and Public Schools (see note 14).
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid. Eberts and Stone, relying on national data from the Sustaining Effects Survey of elementary schools, find that the student-teacher ratio is nearly 12 percent lower for union teachers. Kleiner and Petree, "Unionism and Licensing of Public School Teachers" (see note 21), p. 316, using state-level data, also find lower (7 percent) student-teacher ratios for union teachers.
33. Similarly, Hoxby, "How Teachers Unions Affect Education Production" (see note 21), p. 695, uses district-level data and finds a decline of about 9 percent in her preferred specification.
34. Eberts and Stone, Unions and Public Schools (see note 14), p. 156.
35. Ibid., pp. 119-20, 143-44.
36. In some exceptional cases, total costs of unionized production are lower at very large scales of integrated operations, as found, for example, by Steven G. Allen, "Unionization and Productivity in Office Building and School Construction," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 39 (1986): 187-201, in construction;
37. and Wesley W. Wilson, Joe A. Stone, and M. C. Mitchell, "Product Selection and Costs in a Partially Unionized Industry," Journal of Labor Research 16 (1995): 81-95, in sawmills.
38. Jay G. Chambers, "The Impact of Collective Bargaining for Teachers on Resource Allocation in Public School Districts," Journal of Urban Economics 4 (1977): 324-39;
39. and W. C. Hall and N. Carroll, "The Effect of Teachers' Organizations on Salaries and Class Size," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 28 (1975): 834-41.
40. Randall W. Eberts and Joe A. Stone, "Teachers Unions and the Cost of Public Education," Economic Inquiry 24 (1986): 631-44.
41. Hoxby, "How Teachers Unions Affect Education Production" (see note 21).
42. Lorraine M. McDonnell and Anthony Pascal, Organized Teachers in American Schools (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1979), p. 83.
43. Eberts and Stone, Unions and Public Schools (see note 14).
44. Studies of unions and productivity include John H. Pencavel, "The Distribution and Efficiency Effects of Trade Unions in Britain," British Journal of Industrial Relations 40 (1977): 137-56,
45. for British coal fields; Kim B. Clark, "Unionization and Productivity: Micro-Econometric Evidence," Quarterly Journal of Economics 95 (1980): 613-39,
46. for cement producers; and Ronald G. Ehrenberg and others, "Unions and Productivity in the Public Sector: A Study of Municipal Libraries," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 36 (1983): 199-213.
47. Susanna Loeb and Marianne Page, "Examining the Link between Teacher Wages and Student Outcomes: The Importance of Alternative Labor Market Opportunities and Non-Pecuniary Variation," Review of Economics and Statistics 82, no. 3 (2000): 393-408.
48. Johnson and Donaldson, "The Effects of Collective Bargaining" (see note 15).
49. See Daniel Aaronson, Lisa Barrow, and William Sander, "Teachers and Student Achievement in the Chicago Public High Schools," paper presented at the Labor Market Policy/Princeton Industrial Relations Section Tenth Annual Policy Conference sponsored by the University of Chicago, DePaul University, the University of Illinois, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 2003;
50. and Steven Rivkin, Eric Hanushek, and John Kain, "Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement," Econometrica 73, no. 2 (2005): 417-58.
51. Kleiner and Petree, "Unionism and Licensing of Public School Teachers" (see note 21);
52. F. H. Nelson and M. Rosen, "Are Teachers Unions Hurting American Education? A State-by-State Analysis of the Impact of Collective Bargaining among Teachers on Student Performance," Technical Report (Milwaukee: Institute for Wisconsin's Future, 1996);
53. Lala C. Steelman, Brian Powell, and Robert M. Carini, "Do Teachers Unions Hinder Educational Performance?" Harvard Educational Review 70, no. 4 (2000): 437-66.
54. Kleiner and Petree, "Unionism and Licensing of Public School Teachers" (see note 21).
55. These studies include Randall W. Eberts and Joe A. Stone, "Teachers Unions and the Productivity of Public Schools," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 40 (1987): 354-63;
56. Martin I. Milkman, "Teachers Unions, Productivity, and Minority Student Achievement," Journal of Labor Research 18 (1997): 247-50;
57. P. W. Grimes and C. A. Register, "Teachers Unions and Student Achievement in High School Economics," Journal of Economic Education 21 (1990): 297-308;
58. and L. M. Argys and D. I. Rees, "Unionization and School Productivity: A Re-examination," Research in Labor Economics 14, edited by S. Polachek (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1995): 49-68.
59. Sam Peltzman, "Political Economy of Public Education: Non-College-Bound Students," Journal of Law and Economics 39 (1996): 73-120, also found negative effects of unions on low-achieving students. He used state-level data over several years, and his analysis may therefore be subject to the same estimation biases found in Kleiner and Petree and others using highly disaggregated data. It should also be mentioned that the effects of unions on these students varied over the period.
60. Hoxby, "How Teachers Unions Affect Education Production" (see note 21). H. L. Zwerling and T. Thomason, "The Effects of Teachers Unions on the Probability of Dropping Out of High School," Journal of Collective Negotiations 23 (1994): 239-50, also examined the effect of unions on dropout rates but found mixed results. Male students in union districts had lower dropout rates than those in nonunion districts, but female students did not. However, their controls for factors that could bias the estimates were not as extensive as Hoxby's.
61. Both groups use difference-in-differences techniques to control for unobservable time-invariant factors. The student-level studies, such as Eberts and Stone and Milkman, use pre- and post-test score data, which in essence controls for student, class, parental, and district factors that may affect student achievement but do not vary over time. They also include a long list of explicit factors that affect student achievement. Hoxby does not control for student characteristics through differencing, but does include an abbreviated list of factors in her estimation. She uses a difference-in-differences and instrumental variables approach to control for unobservable and steadily trending school and state characteristics that may affect both educational outcomes and the decision to unionize. Eberts and Stone also use instrumental variables to control for underlying factors that may cause teachers to organize.
62. Lawrence Mishel and Joydeep Roy, Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends (Washington: EPI Press, April 2006), have compiled a list of issues regarding the measurement of high school dropout rates and their use as a measure of student achievement.
63. One study, for example, finds that even within the traditional organization of classroom instruction, the use of hourly tutors for selected students improves student performance, especially among disadvantaged students. G. Farkas, "Structuring Tutoring for At Risk Children in the Early Years," Applied Behavioral Science Review 1 (1993): 69-2.
64. Argys and Rees, "Unionization and School Productivity" (see note 40). Studies have found differential effects of union schools on minorities. Both Milkman and Grimes and Register (see note 40) find that African Americans do better in union than nonunion districts. Furthermore, Milkman finds that the union effect on minorities depends on the level of racial diversity in the school.
65. Johnson and Kardos, "Reform Bargaining" (see note 12).
66. Lorraine McDonnell and Anthony Pascal, "Teachers Unions and Educational Reform," Center for Policy Research in Education (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1988).
67. Johnson and Kardos, "Reform Bargaining" (see note 12).
68. Al Shanker, the long-time president of the AFT, was regarded by many as a champion of educational reform among the union movement. Like his later counterpart in the NEA, Robert Chase, Shanker believed that the future of public education and teacher collective bargaining depended on teachers unions taking more of a leadership role. Shanker died in 1997, the year in which Chase made his National Press Club speech. His successors, however, did not pursue the reform effort with the same fervor, according to Julia Koppich, "The As-Yet-Unfulfilled Promise of Reform Bargaining: Forging a Better Match between the Labor Relations System We Have and the Education System We Want," in Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools, edited by Hannaway and Rotherham (see note 14), pp. 203-27.
69. Charles Kerchner and Julia Koppich, "Organizing around Quality: The Struggle to Organize Mind Workers," in Teachers Unions and Education Policy: Retrenchment or Reform? edited by Ronald Henderson, Wayne Urban, and Paul Wolman (London: Elsevier, 2004), pp. 187-221.
70. Koppich, "The As-Yet-Unfulfilled Promise of Reform Bargaining" (see note 50).
71. Kerchner and Koppich, "Organizing around Quality" (see note 51).
72. Christine Murray, "Innovative Local Teachers Unions: What Have They Accomplished?" in Teachers Unions and Education Policy: Retrenchment or Reform? edited by Henderson, Urban, and Wolman (see note 51), pp. 149-66.
73. J. Archer, "Districts Targeting Teacher Seniority in Union Contracts," Education Week, April 12, 2000.
74. Donald Gratz, "Lessons from Denver: The Pay for Performance Pilot," Phi Delta Kappan 86, no. 8 (April 2005).
75. Johnson and Kardos, "Reform Bargaining" (see note 12).
76. Julian Betts and Anne Danenberg, "School Accountability in California: An Early Evaluation," Brookings Papers on Education Policy (2002).
77. Gratz, "Lessons from Denver" (see note 56).
78. In this discussion I rely heavily on arguments presented in Richard J. Murnane and David K. Cohen, "Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive," Harvard Educational Review 56, no. 1 (1986): 1-17.
79. The analysis by Avinash Dixit, "Incentives and Organizations in the Public Sector: An Interpretative Review," Journal of Human Resources 37, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 696-727, of incentives in education also coincides closely with ours. Dixit suggests four complications that confound the simple "principal-agent" model of implicit contracting in educational settings: multiple goals, multiple principals, lack of competition in the product market, and agents motivated by intrinsic values.
80. Harry P. Hatry, John M. Greiner, and Brenda G. Ashford, Issues and Case Studies in Teacher Incentive Plans, 2nd ed. (Washington: Urban Institute Press, 1994). Murnane and Cohen, "Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem" (see note 60), also emphasize the short-lived nature of merit pay systems.
81. Dennis J. Tulli, "An Assessment of Student Achievement before and during a Merit Pay Program for Teachers of the Penn Manor School District," Ed.D. diss. (Temple University, 1999).
82. Charles Clotfelter and Helen Ladd, "Recognizing and Rewarding Success in Public Schools," in Holding Schools Accountable, Performance-Based Reform in Education, edited by Helen F. Ladd (Brookings, 1996), pp. 23-63.
83. Unfortunately, the study did not use a true control group and there was a similar rate of improvement in the year prior to the implementation of the performance-based system. In contrast, Candice Prendergast, "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature 37 (1999): 7-63, documents that private sector businesses reward workers more through promotions and group-based merit systems, such as gain sharing or profit sharing, than through individual merit rewards.
84. Betts and Danenberg, "School Accountability in California" (see note 58).
85. Gratz, "Lessons from Denver" (see note 56).
86. Kathryn Parker Boudett, Elizabeth A. City, and Richard J. Murnane, eds, Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press, 2005).
87. Courts have interpreted the National Labor Relations Act to reserve functions such as peer review, curriculum development, resource allocation, and assessment as the sole prerogative of management, not labor. The Yeshiva University case, which went before the U.S. Supreme Court, denied faculty collective bargaining rights on the grounds that they exercise managerial decisions in their determination of tenure and the promotion of other faculty members. Some states, such as California, have passed legislation to circumvent this law and allow members of a bargaining unit to participate in decisions as listed above.
88. Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll, September 1998.
89. Sandra Black, "Reforming the Unions," American School Board Journal (February 2002), offers several of these critical points.