In this article, the authors Sarah A. Anzia and Terry M. Moe, offer a retort to William S. Koski and Elieen L. Horng's argument that their study of seniority-based transfer rules is narrow and that its findings only apply under limited circumstances. The Koski-Horng's study, by contrast, takes a broad frame--so broad that, as detailed in…

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…