The 50-State Comparison on teacher employment contract policies provides a national comparison of teacher employment contract policies in all states. All of the information was gathered from and focused on state statutes and regulations. State case law was also utilized for metrics related to collective bargaining. Data collection focused…

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…

For both proponents and critics alike, among the most salient features of charter schooling today is their freedom from collective bargaining agreements that shape staffing and work rules and limit school administrators' discretion. This is changing in some states where a small but growing number of charter schools are unionized. How collective…

The unionization of instructional workers is a central feature of U.S. higher education, with more than a quarter of those teaching college classes covered by collectively bargained contracts. Though dated, the best existing numbers indicate that more than 430,000 faculty members, graduate students, and related personnel are in bargaining units;…

Can a teachers' union successfully be both a hardball-playing defender of its rights and a collaborative force for the common good? It is both a question of philosophy and, increasingly, one of policy direction for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), whose biennial convention in Detroit showed delegates grappling with the tension between…

This paper is a response to Academic Senate Resolution 19.05 F11, which called for an update of the 1990 Academic Senate Paper Guidelines for Developing a Faculty Evaluation Process. The current paper presents the position that faculty evaluations should be focused on professional development and on personal and professional growth and should…

Inside every airline magazine is an ad in which Chester L. Karrass insists, "You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate." This suggests that the "art" of negotiation is more important than the substance of any issue under consideration. When it's time to negotiate at the author's college, the faculty union's "professional…

About 12 percent of all charter schools have bargaining agreements. Why do charter schools unionize? What is in these charter school contracts? Can they be considered innovative or models for union reform? And how do they compare to traditional district/union teacher contracts? Center on Reinventing Public Education legal analyst Mitch Price…

First it was changes to pay, then evaluation systems, and then tenure laws. Now, lawmakers in several states are challenging collective bargaining, the foundation of teacher unionism. Leaders in Idaho, Indiana, and Tennessee are proposing bills that would limit what, if anything, teachers' unions could negotiate. None of the proposals has yet…

Massive protests have been the norm in Wisconsin, since Gov. Scott Walker unveiled a plan to strip many collective bargaining rights from teachers and most other public employees. GOP elected officials are pursuing similar measures in Ohio and other states. But in the DeForest district, like some others around the state, collective bargaining,…

The president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Randi Weingarten, is putting the sensitive issue of due process on the education reform table, with a pledge to work with districts to streamline the often-cumbersome procedures for dismissing teachers who fail to improve their performance after receiving help and support. She has also…

In a previous article, Gordon A. Gregory and Mark Heinen criticized John M. Caraway's article describing recent successful experiences with the use of mediation in place of arbitration for failing to note the perception of the grievants. A reexamination of the data show that 80 percent of the grievants were satisfied with the mediation procedure.…

Steps and successful techniques for grievance handling and a review of the major legislation connected with unionism. (MLF)