Efforts to change how public organizations perform inevitably lead to questions about how public workforces are constituted. Following this pattern, efforts to reform the U.S. public sector have focused considerable attention on the role played by labor unions: though the power of unions has diminished in many parts of the American economy, a large percentage of public workforces remain unionized. Across public policy areas, teachers unions have emerged as the epicenter of the debate over unionization (Goldstein 2014). A simple assumption lies at the heart of arguments supporting and criticizing the role that teachers unions play in public education: unionization affect how schools operate and, therefore, what students learn.
To supporters, unions promote quality, professionalization, and set the stage for student success (Kahlenberg and Potter 2014). Without strong unions, they argue, teachers cannot bring their expert experience and training to bear on how their schools are run. Critics of teachers unions see them as selfish, against accountability, and preserving the status quo of America’s anachronistic, failing public education system (Moe 2011). Despite compelling arguments on both sides, it remains unclear if the aforementioned assumption is warranted: few works have explored whether schools with unionized workforces actually cultivate different working and learning environments relative to those without a union presence.
This paper contributes by exploring this assumption empirically. Using nationally-representative survey data collected by the U.S. Department of Education in the 2003-04, 2007-08, and 2011-12 school years, the paper explores whether there is evidence that unions affect how schools function. Specifically, it asks whether unions foster different teaching climates, defined as the nature of a school’s teaching environment, and measured by looking at factors like classroom management, interactions with school leaders, and accountability (Oberfield 2017). If unions do not change how schools function, it becomes harder to understand why they would affect what students learn.
The paper begins by asking why, at the level of theory, we might (or might not) expect that teachers unions would create schools with different teaching climates. It then reviews what we know and don’t know about the role that teachers unions play in U.S. public schools. Drawing from this literature review, and the theoretical section that precedes it, it then specifies a hypothesis to test in its analysis.
From there, it details its empirical approach: it uses multiple measures of unionization, four levels of analysis, and multivariate regression analysis. Meeting this panel’s charge, it also looks at change over time: though most districts maintained their union status over the years studied here, a number moved in one way or another. By looking at how changes in unionization were associated with changes in teaching climates, the paper can present a crucial perspective on the role that unions might play in shaping school life. After presenting and discussing its findings, the paper concludes by considering their implications for the debate over teachers unions in the U.S. and our broader understanding of the role that unions play in accelerating or preventing change in public workforces.
Organisational change and the organisation of public sector work
