Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The role teachers’ unions play in productivity of the K-12 education system is a contentious issue in education policy. Advocates argue that unions increase the quality of information and training available to teachers, and unlike private sector unions, operate by increasing the demand for public goods (Freeman 1986). In addition, by raising wages, unions may attract more skilled teachers into the profession. Opponents argue that unions increase the costs faced by the school district and stand in the way of merit based pay, perhaps even keeping low performing teachers employed against the best interests of their students.

In addition, the landscape faced by teachers unions in the current education system is changing rapidly. Charter schools are expanding and often do so without a unionized workforce. In addition some states are revisiting the favorable legal environment teachers’ unions face, and enacting more restrictive policies on bargaining rights.

Despite this controversy, the actual consequences of teachers’ unions on productivity in the public K-12 education system are not well understood. Hoxby (1996) finds that teachers unions increase costs borne by school districts, reduce student teacher ratios, and increase the dropout rate. Lovenheim (2009) however finds that unionization has no meaningful effect on either inputs or outputs in education. These studies consider a historical context of growing teachers’ unions which may be distinct from the modern trend of limiting union influence.

Wisconsin’s 2011 Act 10 provides a useful context to revisit the question. In this Act, Wisconsin limited the power and influence of teachers’ unions by reducing the generosity of the state benefit plan, limiting their ability to negotiate raises, prohibiting mandatory due collection, and, crucially, by requiring annual affirmative elections to maintain the right to collectively bargain. I exploit two sources of variation in the implementation of this law. First, districts held their initial recertification election at different times depending on the length of the pre-policy contract the union negotiated. Second, I look at districts near the voting threshold to compare near-winners with near-losers. I combine voting results from the Wisconsin Public Labor Relations Board with school district financial and assessment data published by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Preliminary evidence suggests that Act 10 had a sharp effect of the presence of Unions within the state and lowered per pupil spending by as much as 9%, while having a weakly negative effect on per pupil spending.

References

Freeman, Richard B. 1986. Unionism comes to the public sector. Journal of Economic Literature 24, no. 1:41-86.

Hoxby, Caroline. 1996. How teachers’ unions affect education production. Quarterly Journal of Economics 111, no. 3:671-718.

Lovenheim, Michael. 2009. The effects of teachers’ unions of education production: Evidence from union election certifications in three Midwestern states. Journal of Labor Economics 27, no. 4:525-587.