This paper presents an update of a 2010-literature review on class size research completed as background in preparation of an affidavit on class size provided by the lead author in the case of "British Columbia Teachers' Federation v. British Columbia," argued before the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 2010, appealed ultimately to…

This study examined high school mathematics teachers' job satisfaction and professional growth in Nepal. The data were collected from 49 high school mathematics teachers using a structured questionnaire with Likert-scale items and some open-ended questions. The quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed mixed findings. Mathematics teachers…

This article examines how teacher collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), teacher salaries, and class sizes changed during the Great Recession. Using a district-level data set of California teacher CBAs that includes measures of subarea contract strength and salaries from 2005-2006 and 2011-2012 tied to district-level longitudinal data, we…

The return of the Conservatives to power in Ontario, Canada in 2018 saw major attacks on the province's K-12 education system, centering on increases to class size and mandatory e-learning courses for students which, taken together with other budget cuts, amounted to the elimination of thousands of teaching and support staff positions, as well as…

This paper summarizes the research on the relationship between teacher unionization and educational outcomes at the state, district, school, and individual (student) levels. Although teachers are the largest organized professionals in the United States, much of educational policy literature has ignored unionization as a subject of study. An…

Collective bargaining is common in American public education, but its consequences are poorly understood. We focus here on key contractual provisions--seniority-based transfer rights--that affect teacher assignments, and we show that these transfer rights operate to burden disadvantaged schools with higher percentages of inexperienced teachers. We…

Between 2011 and 2013 lawmakers in every state proposed, and often enacted, laws intended to impact codified state provisions related to teachers and teachers' unions (author calculation). These new laws either worked against union interests (e.g., by prohibiting collective bargaining) or they aligned with union positions (e.g. by providing…

Chicago teachers voted last week to suspend a 7-day-old strike, sending some 350,000 students back to the classroom and paving the way for the teaching force to vote on a tentative contract. But for many in the Windy City, the contract has raised another potentially tall hurdle: how the cash-strapped district will manage to pay for it. District…

A strike last week by some 29,000 teachers in Chicago pushed long-simmering tensions over deeply divisive school improvement ideas--including changes in teacher evaluation and the takeover or closure of underperforming schools--into the national spotlight. A framework for a tentative agreement emerged last Friday, and the union's house of…

Background: There is currently ongoing debate in Hong Kong between the teachers' union and the Government on the reduction of large class size (typically more than 40 students) in secondary schools and whether smaller class sizes might facilitate improvements in teaching and learning. In fact, many Hong Kong secondary schools have already started…

An increase in teacher hiring in recent years has led some observers to posit a link to the waves of pink slips districts are now sending across the U.S. Between the 1999-2000 and the 2007-08 school years, the teacher force increased at more than double the rate of K-12 student enrollments. Hiring teachers to reduce class sizes remains a…

An International Labour Organization report finds a strong correlation between reductions in overall public spending--often the result of structural adjustment policies--and reduced spending on education. (Author/JOW)

Describes Glenbard Township (Illinois) High School District's win/win solution to negotiating teacher contracts. The district's new cooperative approach succeeded because the negotiating team was expanded (weakening the influence of adversarial-minded negotiators), and the system's best teachers were part of the bargaining team. A standing…

Using a random sample of 12,000 teachers in over 500 New York State school districts, this paper considers the effect of specific union-negotiated, employment-related job provisions on the job separations of individual teachers. Reductions in force and class-size limitations provisions reduce the probability of teacher resignations or dismissals.…

This study examines state-to-state variations in the legality of bargaining over class size in public schools, to determine, first, whether these variations in the legal scope of bargaining bear any relationship to actual class sizes and, second, whether these variations are indirectly associated with teachers' salaries. (Author/CT)