I examine whether the impact of the Great Recession on school district spending, the allocation of resources, and student achievement varied depending on the strength of state's teachers' unions. Employing a diff-in-diff-in-diff identification strategy, I find that school districts in states with strong teachers' unions experienced significantly…

Increased spending and decreased student performance have been attributed in part to teachers' unions and to the collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) they negotiate with school boards. However, only recently have researchers begun to examine impacts of specific aspects of CBAs on student and district outcomes. This article uses a unique measure…

Many low-performing schools across the nation have increased learning time in response to federal requirements for the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. The conditions governing federal waivers of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) also require certain schools to redesign the school day, week, or year to include additional…

The literature on teacher hiring and assignment tends to omit definitions of these key terms. An exception in Cohen-Vogel and Osborne-Lampkin (277), who define teacher assignment as "the reciprocal process between school management and teachers to guide decisions about who will teach, where they will teach, and what they will teach." But the…

Sectoral levelling funds are an arrangement aimed at alleviating a well-known theoretical problem of underinvestment in worker training because of free-rider behaviour of firms. In the Netherlands, collective agreements require firms to participate in such funds in a number of sectors. Using a comprehensive dataset of Dutch firms, we attempt to…

Defines and establishes a common framework to observe, describe, and assess modifications in the public sector bargaining model that hold great promise to incorporate all groups having vital interests in the reallocation of resources through collective bargaining. (Author/MLF)

Appraises the impact of collective bargaining on allocation of resources and policy control in schools through analysis of bargaining over more than a decade in nine school systems. Concludes that, in terms of processes and results, collective bargaining is not radically different in public education and the private sector. (JOW)

Considered are the nature and extent of some of the basic conflicts that arise when two, future-oriented, decision-making processes--institutional program planning/resource allocation and collective bargaining--are both present on the same campus. The identified conflicts come from the experiences of a university that was one of the first in the…

Based on the economic theory of constrained maximizing behavior, this paper constructs a model of decision-making in public schools in order to discuss the role of unions and collective bargaining in resource allocation decisions. Research findings from a study of collective bargaining in New York and Michigan school districts indicate that…

What causes faculty to vote for collective bargaining? Undoubtedly, there is no single answer. A common factor reported by many institutions is some faculty dissatisfaction with compensation, course loads, governance systems, and job security. Another answer, proposed by Ladd and Lipset, is that the rapid growth of collective bargaining in higher…

In reviewing recent and ongoing research on teacher collective bargaining, this article explores patterns of bargaining in public education and the effects of bargaining on educational policy and the allocation of resources. The author summarizes Douglas Mitchell and Charles Kerchner's concept of the "generations" of bargaining--from meeting and…

A study found unionized colleges less effective than non-unionized colleges on eight of nine dimensions: student satisfaction, academic development, career development, and personal development, faculty and administrator employment satisfaction, professional development and faculty quality, system openness, ability to acquire resources, and…

This paper was part of a symposium focusing on collective bargaining as a generic process, and labor relations policy and practice as each affects allocation of resources at various educational organization levels. A set of propositions are developed to show that collective bargaining principles remain the same irrespective of sector, industry, or…

The question of whether two-year colleges with and without faculty unions differ in terms of selected institutional characteristics was investigated. Attention was directed to expenditures spent on instruction, the percentage of revenue obtained from various sources, the educational costs per full-time equivalent student, the faculty-student…

Research findings from a study of collective bargaining in New York and Michigan school districts indicate that collective bargaining does have a significant impact on the allocation of resources in ways that affect student learning. These findings support hypotheses based on the theory that collective bargaining will make a difference in resource…