The National Education Association (NEA), the United States' largest labor union representing close to 3 million educators, implemented a $3 per member dues increase in 2013 to create the Great Public Schools (GPS) Fund grant program to support innovative change efforts within its affiliates. In the first five years of the program, $32.3 million…

In recent years policymakers have seized on teacher evaluation as a primary lever for improving schools. Of all school factors--from expanded school calendars to smaller class sizes to community and family engagement programs--teachers contribute the most to student achievement. Policymakers reason that evaluating teachers based on their students'…

Intended for students, practitioners, policymakers, and academicians in personnel and industrial relations, this book presents findings of a 5-year study of joint union-management programs to improve productivity. Chapter 1 underscores the growth and importance of union-management cooperation and discusses union and management attitudes toward…

Although conventional collective bargaining has helped teachers achieve greater professional status, its win/lose approach causes participants to overlook shared educational objectives. Since the first experiments in win/win bargaining, the acrimony generated by the adversarial process has led an increasing number of school districts to…

This report summarizes the experiences of the Massachusetts Quality of Working Life Center in assisting the attempted and actual start-up of a number of quality of work life (QWL) programs in 1976 and 1977 and in providing ongoing assistance. Lessons learned by the three sites the center launched, other sites, as well as those sites that chose not…

Labor unions hold a somewhat different view of "workplace literacy" efforts than company management often does. Unions believe that workplace literacy programs should be voluntary and involve more that just "work" skills. As in union education of the past, union programs focus on education of the whole worker for life, not just for work. Unions…