In this post, EduShyster interviews Eunice Han, an economist who earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University and is now headed for the University of Utah.
Dr. Han studied the effects of unions on teacher quality and student achievement and concluded that unionization is good for teachers and students alike.
This goes against the common myth that unions are bad, bad, bad.
Han says that “highly unionized districts actually fire more bad teachers.”
And more: It’s pretty simple, really. By demanding higher salaries for teachers, unions give school districts a strong incentive to dismiss ineffective teachers before they get tenure. Highly unionized districts dismiss more bad teachers because it costs more to keep them.
Dr. Han found a natural experiment in the states that abolished collective bargaining.
Indiana, Idaho, Tennessee and Wisconsin all changed their laws in 2010-2011, dramatically restricting the collective bargaining power of public school teachers. After that, I was able to compare what happened in states where teachers’ bargaining rights were limited to states where there was no change. If you believe the argument that teachers unions protect bad teachers, we should have seen teacher quality rise in those states after the laws changed. Instead I found that the opposite happened. The new laws restricting bargaining rights in those four states reduced teacher salaries by about 9%. That’s a huge number. A 9% drop in teachers salaries is unheard of. Lower salaries mean that districts have less incentive to sort out better teachers, lowering the dismissal rate of underperforming teachers, which is what you saw happen in the those four states. Lower salaries also encouraged high-quality teachers to leave the teaching sector, which contributed to a decrease of teacher quality.
Send this link to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and any other reformers you can think of.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As I commented on EduShyster’s blog, nowhere do I see how they define “bad teachers” or “teacher quality”. Test scores?
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Click to access Han_Teacher_dismissal_Feb_16.pdf
“To estimate the union effects on educational outcomes, I look at teacher quality and student achievement. For teacher quality within each district, I use the variable indicating whether a teacher is recognized as a Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT).* Although the HQT lacks an explicit link to the actual educational performance of their matched students, it can serve as a proxy for teacher quality, as it helps identify more qualified teachers. To measure the student achievement, I bring in publicly available data on high school dropout rates by school district provided by NCES and combine with the SASS [US Census Bureau collects the School and Staffing Survey] data.
* The HQT requirement is a provision under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Generally, to be a Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT), a teacher must meet the states’ requirements: 1) have a bachelors’ degree; 2) hold full state certification or licensure, including alternative certification; and 3) demonstrate competency in the subject area they teach, such as passing a subject area test administered by the state.”
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Here’s an interesting footnote in the paper, in light of the passage I quoted above: “When I examine the association between HQT and dropout rate, the effects of HQT on the dropout rate is insignificantly different from zero. This suggests that i) HQT is not measuring true teacher quality, and/or ii) teachers unions affect the dropout rate via channels other than teacher quality.”
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Thanks, FLERP!.
So a High Quality Teacher has a bachelor’s and a license. Meaning, pretty much all teachers. At least, it used to be that way. Oh, and they can pass a math or English test. Well, color me impressed. What about elementary teachers – do they have to pass tests on basic addition and “See Spot Run”? What about a test for who can actually relate to kids?
Sorry, I know this “study” shows what we want it too, but until we get our definitions of “quality” worked out, it’s just as much garbage as “studies” that purport to support rephormster ideas.
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Are there studies that show that teachers’ unions are bad for education, protect bad teachers, that union teachers are drooling, lazy, zombie thugs? Oh I forgot, there is a whole well funded anti-union industrial complex that demonizes teacher unions 24/7 into infinity.
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You make such a good point. It is taken as an unexamined truth that unions are bad for education. Are there actual studies that show this?
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Alice, like most things, there’s not one simple yes or no answer to your question. I’ve been paying attention to teachers and unions since the teachers in my district went on strike in the late-1960s, led by one of my favorite teachers. He was hardly a political radical (he described himself as a moderate Republican, in fact). Naturally, my sympathies were with him and the union.
Later, I heard/read stories that all boiled down to “dedicated teacher prevented by union (rules) from staying late after school to work with students s/he wanted very much to help.” I heard/read this sort of thing with some frequency. I then heard it from actual teachers over the ensuing decades: essentially, “you can’t do that because the contract forbids it” or “you’re making other teachers look lazy, bad, etc.” These teachers were people I know very well and trust without hesitation. They weren’t making it up. I don’t think those stories in the news were all complete fabrications or distortions of reality. It is one of the sad realities of contracts when unions decide to play hardball both with management and with the rank-and-file.
I make no judgments about whether this is “right.” But it happens. And not just in teaching.
We can argue whether a “profession” should have a union. But American history says that teachers have never been widely viewed as “professionals” in this country: far from it. So unionization was inevitable, both for good and for ill. “Management” has made it absolutely necessary for teachers to be unionized and the last 36 years have only reinforced just how necessary it is. Anyone who is sane and has taught in a typical charter chain knows it. Anyone who has taught in a school district like Detroit knows it. The direction politicians have taken with public education absolutely ensures that: 1) teaching can’t be viewed as a profession like medicine, law, architecture, engineering, etc., and thus 2) teachers must be unionized. There’s no other way. And I think that ultimately does hurt education. Just not as much as non-unionization does.
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Mike, I don’t know why you are so worried about unions. The way things are going, there probably won’t be any unions left, especially if Trump and his gang get 2 terms. About 6.7% of the private sector is unionized and one political is totally dedicated to destroying what’s left of unions in the public sector. The other political party pays lip service to unions but does little to actually help unions. Teacher unions have been gutted or eliminated in the right to work states. So don’t worry, unions will soon be gone.
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Joe, I’d really like to have a conversation with you, but you aren’t replying to what I write, but rather to your fantasy of what I write. Did my post appear to you to be expressing WORRY about unions? I think that like so many educators, you cannot stand to waiver from the party line. You don’t accept any sort of questioning of doctrine, you don’t dare express any exception or questioning of it yourself. That makes you a drone. I’ve never been a drone and never will be. I always question, I always think skeptically and critically, and that includes about myself and my work.
My comments about teachers, about unions, and much else are grounded in experience, practice, conversations with colleagues, and loads of reflection. Where do your absurd misreadings of my posts come from, exactly? If you persist in them, I will assume that your only interest is in promoting the safe, party line. I’m very familiar with it and really don’t need a refresher course from you, particularly not at this point in my career.
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Mike, thanks for the ad hominem attack. I won’t reciprocate since this is Diane’s living room. But you typed: “…teachers must be unionized. There’s no other way. And I think that ultimately does hurt education.” You think that unionization hurts education, I disagree. I do agree that teachers need to be unionized. That’s all.
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Joe, you’re more than welcome for the alleged ad hominem attack, particularly after you accused me of writing that unions hurt education by dropping the final key sentence I wrote. That wasn’t an accident on your part. It was a deliberate misrepresentation of which you should be ashamed.
What in fact I concluded was: “And I think that ultimately does hurt education. Just not as much as non-unionization does.”
If you think that what you did was fair, then we are truly done. If you admit that it was not, please apologize to the readers of this blog for willfully trying to distort my carefully-argued and thoughtful comment, just so that you could satisfy yourself that I’m anti-union. That’s most definitely not my view.
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“We can argue whether a “profession” should have a union.”
The same question can be asked about a government: should it have democracy built in it?
I think the answer to both is “These are the best we got.”.
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In addition, it may difficult to attract teachers because of lower salaries all the more reason to retain the “bad ones.”
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This is terrible for ed reform:
“The new laws restricting bargaining rights in those four states reduced teacher salaries by about 9%. ”
9% is a big drop, and they spend an enormous amount of time claiming ed reform is “empowering” teachers. A 9% pay cut is not empowering.
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Ignored in this game of blaming and disenfranchising teachers as a means to save public money is the fact that teachers are the largest “employed” group in the nation; taking away their spending power simply shoots the economy in the foot….and is one of the reasons we can’t seem to get things back on a solid economic track.
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“Send this link to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and any other reformers you can think of.”
Thanks for the suggestion, but this particular interesting, but inconclusive, study may not have a whole lot of impact if they’ve already at least checked out overviews of the relevant literature, such as “Teacher Unions and Student Achievement Executive Summary” http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/Chapter10-Carini-Final.pdf and various articles from “Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today’s Schools.”
Those tend to support the notion that there are academic benefits attributable to unionization for many students at a cost that may or may not be the most efficient use of resources.
For example from Chapter 6 in the latter, “Are Teachers Unions Good for Students?” by Dan Goldhaber:
“Everts and Stone find the total (direct and indirect) effect of collective bargaining agreements is to raise student achievement by about 3 percent over that of districts without such agreements. However, this increase in achievement comes at a cost, as the operating expenses in districts with such agreements are about 15 percent higher per pupil than in comparably achieving districts without such agreements.
“An interesting finding from this study is that the effects of bargaining are not the same for all students. The overall 3 percent increase in student achievement is driven mainly by a large 7 percent increase in the achievement of students whose test performance is close to the mean. Students who are either well below or well above the mean are marginally disadvantaged by the existence of collective bargaining agreements.”
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Oops: Eberts not Everts
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This comment is a perfect example of how, when we buy into the notion that things like “teacher quality” and “student performance” can be measured and compared because the particular “measurement” in question is in our favor, we are ultimately going to lose. Our goal should not be to try to prove numerically or statistically that union teachers are “higher quality” or whatever. The rephormsters have been playing that game a lot longer than we have and they’re very good at it. Our goal should be to point out why they whole thing is a BS argument to begin with.
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That would be a great idea if “reform” thrived on evidence. They don’t!
They look to prejudice and profit as their guiding principles.
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While I’ve no doubt that Dr. Han’s thesis holds water over the broad range of US schools, I’d be interested in her take on how that plays out in the highest-needs schools like Detroit, Philadelphia, Oakland, etc. I don’t have research data to support my suspicion that what happens in Detroit looks very little like what happens in Bloomfield Hills, Grosse Pointe, etc.
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All the challenges related to high needs schools are very difficult to override via HQT. As you well know, chronic absenteeism is maybe the number one obstacle to student achievement. The urban NJ high school I taught in had an enrollment of 3,300 students (9 – 12). On any given day the absentee list had anywhere from 500 to 800 names listed. This was every day. The absentee rates touted by struggling schools that run in the 90+% range are extremely deceptive. It is not uncommon to see students miss 20 to 40+ days a school year. In any given class the actual absentee rates can be much higher due to tardies, early dismissal, band lessons, health office visits, and more. Sad but true, HQT unionized teachers simply can’t make up for the accrued seat time and learning deficits. The frustration produced by these deficits is one of the main sources of the teacher burn-out you’ve written about.
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Argue as much about the usefulness of unions as you want, it’s a disaster that we don’t have collective bargaining in TN.
Any time we want to oppose something the TN government (which usually means the Governor) comes up with, we have to take a roundabout way of letting our opinion heard and in truth, we have minimal power.
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