Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Wisconsin’s controversial Act 10 was passed in 2011, significantly curtailing collective bargaining for public employees, including teachers, and increasing required public employee pension contributions. The bill was designed to give local governments, including school districts, more flexibility in negotiating with teachers and curb the rising costs of fulfilling pension promises to public sector employees. However, the diminished rights of collective bargaining set off a firestorm of public outcry and protests at the Wisconsin Capitol. The law is now in its third year, and its full effects are not yet known. Past research has shown that Act 10 allowed school districts, such as Milwaukee, realize significant savings on their pension costs (see for example Robert M. Costrell (2015) Collective Bargaining and District Costs for Teacher Health Insurance: An Examination of the Data from the BLS and Wisconsin, Journal of School Choice, 9:4, 578-603). However, it is still unclear what the impact of the policy change has been within schools.

This paper evaluates the impact of Act 10 on student achievement, teacher salaries, and student-teacher ratios using district and year fixed effects estimation methods. I use an administrative panel dataset that includes all 429 school districts in Wisconsin from the 2007-08 through the 2013-14 school year. Robustness checks are provided to show the validity of the fixed effects model over a simple pooled OLS or random effects model. Preliminary results show that Act 10 had no statistically significant impact on teacher-student ratios, increased average teacher salaries, and had no significant effect on student achievement overall. When looking at the impact of Act 10 on teacher-student ratios, controls for district enrollment, percent of students of color, percent of economically disadvantaged, percent of English Language Learner, percent of students with disabilities, and percent of female students are included in addition to district and year fixed effects. When looking at the impact of Act 10 on average teacher salaries, I include controls for average total experience, pupil-teacher ratios, enrollment, percent of students of color, percent of economically disadvantaged students, percent of English Language Learners, percent of students with disabilities, and percent of female students in addition to district and year fixed effects. When looking at student achievement, I include subject and grade level dummies in addition to district and year fixed effects. Detailed subgroup analyses will also be presented on measures of student achievement. This is an important step forward in understanding the full implications of the drastically shifted policy landscape in Wisconsin schools following the passage of Act 10.