Creating New Labor Models for Teachers in the 21st Century:
Contents
Introduction3
A Brief Survey of the 50 States
3
The Competitive Representation Model4
The Idaho Experience5
Local-Only Teachers’ Unions (LOTUs)6
The Community of Interest Model6
The Texas Experience7
Implementation Issues8
Combining Models8
The Free Agent Model9
Charter and Private School Experience10
Educating Teachers About Their Choices
11
Bibliography12
Footnotes13
About the Author13
Based in Olympia, Wash., the nonprofit Freedom Foundation has been advocating for free markets, property
rights, education reform, smaller government and fiscal responsibility since its founding in 1991.
2
Choice, Empowerment and Fairness
A union monopoly, like any other monopoly, tends
by its nature to be inefficient and unresponsive and to
deter innovation. Further, monopoly unions confine
all teachers within a single bargained contract. By enforcing a “one-contract-fits-all” mentality, many superlative teachers are unfairly limited in terms of salary
and professional development.
In short, like any profession, there are good teachers, average teachers and poor teachers. Schools and
school districts—like the neighborhoods and communities they serve—face different challenges in widely
varying environments. Unfortunately, we have a labor
relations model developed in the
1930s that treats all teachers and
often all schools and districts the
same.
This paper offers alternatives
to the almost century-old, cookie-cutter labor relations model
that no longer benefits all teachers. After briefly describing the
current bargaining models in the
50 states, three alternatives are
offered: the Competitive Representation Model, the Community of Interest Model and the Free
Agency Model. Each represents
a departure from the traditional
bargaining model and each teacher or district should
decide which, if any, might work best for them.
Introduction
A
t the dawn of the 20th century, America needed
workers for the industrial revolution that was sweeping the nation. The American education system today
is the result of those century-old economic and political influences.
Sometimes referred to as “Taylorism,” our education system was “reformed” to create a steady supply
of industrial labor. The labor-management model for
teachers and administrators is
also decades old.
Most American labor law
is based on the Wagner Act of
1937 and the Taft-Hartley Act
of 1947. The system we have
now was originally designed
to protect teachers from arbitrary administrative decisions, ensure a basic level of
pay, offer limited protections
for academic freedom and assure minimum working conditions.
These goals remain important, but the economy
has changed in the last century, the teaching field has
become more professionalized and education reforms
have altered the pedagogical landscape. Like all industries and professional fields, managers of our educational system must re-examine age-old practices and
be open to new ideas that may be more compatible
with today’s reality and offer better results.
This is particularly true of current teacher and administrator labor-management models. Although the
current system has some advantages, it often fails to
offer teachers representation choices, professional empowerment and basic wage fairness.
The dominant labor-management model for teachers in the United States in one in which a single union,
having gained the support of a slim majority of teachers, earns monopoly bargaining power for all teachers.
Once “certification” has taken place, individual teachers or groups of teacher that have a similar “community
of interest” lose all choice over labor representation.
“A union monopoly,
like any other
monopoly, tends
by its nature to
be inefficient and
unresponsive and
to deter innovation.”
A Brief Survey
of the 50 States
Collective bargaining is defined (for the purposes of
this paper) as the legal requirement that local school
boards must bargain with a single recognized and certified teacher union over teacher salaries, benefits and
possibly working conditions (as well as other labor issues). Collective bargaining with teachers is mandated
in 34 states. In 11 states (WY, UT, CO, AZ, MO, KY,
WV, AR, LA, MS, AL) bargaining is allowed but not
required.
In many of these states, districts bargain with local unions despite the absence of a requirement to do
so. In only five states (TX, GA, SC, NC, VA) is collec-
3
Creating New Labor Models for Teachers in the 21st Century:
word-of-mouth, meet off-campus and come to an
agreement within 30 days.
That’s a difficult task.
In reality, there is rarely a mechanism to decertify
unions or a process that affords other organizations
the right to compete to represent teachers. Once a representation monopoly is created, it almost always becomes a permanent monopoly.
This paper takes no position on whether collective
bargaining by teachers is good or bad for public policy.
It does argue that there are better ways to collective
bargain.
tive bargaining by teachers explicitly illegal. Teachers’
unions still exist in these states, but they focus on lobbying efforts directed at state legislatures and other political actions.
The education labor representation market is controlled by a duopoly. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are essentially the only two organizations that compete for
teacher representation. Ninety percent of all teachers
in the United States are represented by one of these two
organizations.
Once teachers vote to unionize and certify an association/union to represent them, the law gives that organization a monopoly or “exclusive bargaining rights”
for all teachers in the district.
Once this happens, the organization is rarely, if ever,
required to recertify or prove it still has the support of
a threshold of teachers.
Instead, an onerous process of decertification is required to replace an existing labor union. During a 30day “window period” generally occurring 60 to 90 days
before the current contract expires, a certain percentage of teachers must express a
desire to challenge certification.
Most states require a 30
percent “showing of interest.” Noted education researcher Myron Lieberman
has suggested in several
scholarly articles that states
should lower the showing of
interest requirement from
30 percent to 10 percent.
Such a reform is crucial to
implement all of the models described below because
current rules make a 30
percent showing of interest
very difficult.
Most union contracts
have an “exclusivity” clause
that prevents anyone except existing union representatives from using school facilities, mail systems,
mailboxes, bulletin boards, etc., to organize teachers.
As a result, any group of teachers interested in decertifying the current union must inform others by
The Competitive
Representation Model
Economists have repeatedly shown that competition is beneficial. It lowers costs. It improves responsiveness to the consumer. It increases efficiency.
The United States government agrees. Starting with
the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, the federal government has actively prosecuted monopolistic behavior to
protect consumers.
Labor unions, however,
are a protected class, shielded by law from anti-trust enforcement.
The Competitive Representation Model would
create a structure by which
organizations would have
to actively compete for the
right to represent all the
teachers of a district and,
intermittently, re-earn the
right to maintain that representative position.
Under the Competitive
Representation system, the
right to represent teachers is
opened to a host of agencies. Nonprofit organizations,
individual law firms and local teacher organizations
would all have the right to compete for the “exclusive
bargaining right.”
In some respects, a monopoly would remain, but
“Economists have
repeatedly shown
that competition is
beneficial. It lowers
costs. It improves
responsiveness to
the consumer. It
increases efficiency.”
4
Choice, Empowerment and Fairness
the teachers should hold an exclusive bargaining for a
clearly established and reasonable span of time. If the
time span is too short, unions will be hold certification
elections all the time. If the span is too long, unions
will be insulated from membership concerns.
Whatever term is selected, however, that term
should be clearly articulated to the union, teachers and
administration, and then strictly adhered to.
Some states, such as Idaho, require recertification
every year. Other time frames ranging from two to four
years would also be effective.
Once the monopolistic bargaining right becomes
too long term, leadership of the organization loses the
incentive to keep dues down, respond to membership
needs and avoid political participation.
there would be regular competitive processes to earn
or maintain that monopoly.
By adopting such a model, labor representation
would experience immediate changes. Teacher union
dues would fall. As with any monopoly, current unions
can charge whatever they like.1
However, in a competitive environment, agencies
vying for representation rights would use lower union
dues to entice teachers to their organization.2
Bargaining representatives would also be more
responsive to the preferences of their membership.
Teacher unions often suffer from the “Iron Law of Oligarchy,” which posits that over time, the leadership of
an organization develops interests different from the
membership they claim to represent.
In a monopolistic environment, teachers’ union officers are insulated from repercussions if their preferences differ from their membership. Individual teachers who may feel alienated by union actions have no
real choices.
In the Competitive Representation Model, outside
agencies could compete with existing representation
agents by promising to pursue policies more in line
with the general membership.
And finally, the presence of multiple agencies competing for the right to represent teachers raises the possibility of divorcing representation from politics.
Currently, the Washington Education Association
and the National Education Association are heavily involved in political activities—whether member teachers support those positions or not.
Frustrated teachers who do not embrace the same
political ideology as union leadership feel compelled
to remain in the union in order to benefit from other
services the union provides. Absent any other choices,
teachers find themselves contributing dues to political
causes with which they disagree.
In a competitive environment, where it is possible
that a local law firm or nonprofit organization wins
exclusive bargaining rights, such organizations would
not participate in lobbying activities.
In some ways, such an outcome is ideal. State and
national organizations such as the NEA and WEA can
focus on lobbying activities and bargaining agents can
focus on district-wide teacher contracts.
In the Competitive Representation Model, organizations that earn the support of 51 percent or more of
The Idaho Experience
In 2011, the Idaho State Legislature adopted Senate
Bill 1108 at the request of the Idaho Superintendent of
Public Schools, Tom Luna. The bill does not establish
a Competitive Representation Model, but it does adopt
some reforms that simulate many aspects of such a system.
Central to the Idaho reforms was Section 18 of the
bill, which mandates that certified bargaining agencies
recertify every year. The law states:
(a) At the commencement of each school year, the
local education association identified in the agreement
from the prior year, if such existed, shall certify to the
board of trustees that the local education association
has been selected and designated as the local education organization for the professional employees of the
district. This certification shall be provided in writing on a form agreed upon between the parties as one
(1) of the options detailed below. The purpose of such
certification is to provide the district’s administration
and board with notice of the appropriate entity for the
administration and board to work with relating to personnel matters.
(b) Within ten (10) days of the date a request for negotiations is initiated by either the local education organization or the board of trustees or its designee, the
local education organization must provide proof that it
has been duly chosen by a majority of the professional
employees of the district as their representative organization for negotiations under this act.
5
Creating New Labor Models for Teachers in the 21st Century:
Under such a system, the “exclusive bargaining
right” granted to a teachers’ union or any organization is temporary. Each year, the certification process
is open to competition.
Although the law does not specifically authorize
other agencies to compete for the monopolistic bargaining right, neither does the law prohibit it. Nor does
the law suggest that established teachers’ unions are the
only entities that may compete for such a privilege.
Under the new “Luna Plan,” complacent unions will
face potential competition. It is too early to tell if a
competitive market will actually emerge from the Idaho reforms or if dues will fall and representative agents
will become more responsive to membership. It will
take time for the new system to become established
and more time after that to collect sufficient data.
Regardless, researchers should pay close attention to
the events in Idaho and assess the results when data are
available.
opted by Idaho will only prove effective if alternative
bargaining agencies step forward to challenge existing
unions for the right to bargain on behalf of teachers.
LOTUs are ideal agencies to perform that function.
In Washington, teachers of the Sprague-Lamont
School District and St. John School District both utilized the support of Northwest Professional Educators
to decertify their Washington Education Association
representation in favor of LOTU representation.
The new group will bargain on behalf of the teachers
at the local level while partnering with the Association
of American Educators (AAE) to provide liability insurance and legal protection.
In all, LOTUs have been created in 20 districts
across seven states.3
Local-Only Teachers
Unions (LOTUs)
The Community of Interest Model provides teachers
with a choice of bargaining representation by breaking up the “exclusive bargaining right” monopoly. The
Competitive Representation Model preserves the monopoly but requires competition to earn it.
By contrast, the Community of Interest Model creates a system in which there is more than one bargaining unit. Under the Community of Interest system,
teachers could form collective bargaining units based
on a common “community of interest.” Communities
of interest could include various subsets of the teacher
profession.
For example, it is possible that science teachers may
want to form their own bargaining unit separate from
driver education and physical education teachers. Or,
it could be that very specialized teachers such as those
who provide special education services may want their
own bargaining unit.
Other possibilities include elementary teachers in
a district forming a bargaining unit independent of
middle school and high school teachers.
Community of Interests systems allow for labor
differentiation. In higher education, for example, it is
common for professors in the business school to earn
more than professors of equal rank in the social studies. Similarly, brain surgeons typically earn more than
pediatricians.
The Community
of Interest Model
Another labor reform gaining in popularity with
teachers is the creation of Local-Only Teachers Unions
(LOTUs). LOTUs are local organizations that offer an
alternative to statewide or national teacher unions.
These groups form at the district level and assume
all the powers of a union including levying dues, serving as the exclusive bargaining authority. They differ
from traditional unions because they are not affiliates
of larger organizations and so focus solely on local issues.
They also generally do not engage in political activities, but rather work to keep dues low. They represent
only teachers but not district staff.
LOTUs are natural competitors to established statewide and national teacher unions. They provide the
same level of professional services—such as liability insurance—and perform the same bargaining functions
as traditional unions, but do so at usually one-third the
costs.
Such organizations are critical to establishing a
Competitive Representation system. Like all markets,
competition is a function of how many suppliers (or
potential suppliers) exist. The recertification laws ad-
6
Choice, Empowerment and Fairness
development and the absence of shared governance as
primary concerns. The Community of Interest Model
empowers teachers with common concerns to focus
their bargaining on the issues that most concern them.
Despite different wages, morale at universities and
hospitals seem unaffected by the variations in pay. In
almost every labor market in the world, professionals are permitted to pursue fair market value based on
their unique skill set. Teacher collective bargaining is
one of the few instances where different practitioners
are required to bargain together and accept a uniform
wage across many different job types.
Community of Interest labor systems provide an alternative to highly contentious merit pay proposals. In
merit pay systems, teachers are awarded bonuses based
on improving test scores.
Critics argue that tests scores are a function of several variables, most of which the teacher has no control
over (socio-economic status, school resources, etc.).
The Community of Interest labor model allows for salary competition within the education field without tying money to test scores.
The Community of Interest Model could also promote education reform
and experimentation by
giving individual teachers
more flexibility in terms of
pedagogy and curriculum.
Current labor contracts demand a “one-size-fits-all”
model because the contract
must apply to every teacher
in the district regardless of
grade level or content area.
Allowing multiple bargaining units in the same district
permits teachers to express
different preferences unique
to their subfield of teaching.
It is possible that science teachers in a district want
higher salaries but the social studies teachers want more
money for field trips. Multiple bargaining units empower
each community of interest to pursue their own agendas.
A recent survey of teachers exiting the profession
conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics found that low pay was not the primary reason
for professional dissatisfaction (Luekens, 2004). Other
concerns, such as planning time and workload, were
ranked higher.
Other teachers referenced the lack of professional
The Texas Experience
The Community of Interest Model does not exist, as
described above, in any state in the U.S. Texas, however,
has a system that comes close. By examining how the
Texas system works, we can gain an understanding of
how the Community of Interest Model would function.
Texas is one of the five states that explicitly prohibits
collective bargaining by teachers. Despite the prohibition, several highly active teacher associations with
large memberships exist in Texas.
Like unions, these teacher organizations provide legal representation and advice, offer liability insurance
and professional development
opportunities, lobby the
state Legislature on behalf of
teachers and provide a variety of health and life insurance opportunities.
In effect, they serve all
the functions of a traditional
teacher union except bargaining with the local district.
The three largest organizations in Texas are the Texas
State Teachers Association,
the Association of Texas Professional Educators and the
Texas Classroom Teacher Association.
Because Texas prohibits collective bargaining, none of the organizations identified
above has an “exclusive bargaining right.” Absent that
legally created monopoly, Texas teacher organizations
have to compete for membership just like any other organization or group of organizations.
As with any competitive market, the various organizations try to differentiate from one another by
specializing, providing higher levels of service and innovating. For example, the Texas Classroom Teacher
Association distinguishes itself from other organization by providing access to nine staff attorneys that will
“Allowing multiple
bargaining units in
the same district
permits to express
different preferences
unique to their
subfield of teaching.”
7
Creating New Labor Models for Teachers in the 21st Century:
help members with any legal issues they may face.
In contrast, the Association of Texas Professional
Educators emphasizes its ability to advocate on behalf
of teachers at the state capitol. And the Texas State
Teacher Association proudly notes it is the official affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA).
The competition the Texas model imposes is good for
both the teacher and the representative organizations.
The Texas model closely resembles what a Community of Interest Model would look like—except that
instead of teacher organizations differentiating themselves based on services offered, teacher unions would
differentiate themselves based on the community of
interest they would serve.
Just as various competing teacher associations
arose in Texas, under a Community of Interest Model,
various competing teachers’ unions would arise offering specialized representation based on content areas
(math and science, social studies, humanities and arts),
grade levels (elementary, middle school, high school),
or possibly skill sets (special education, bilingual education, counseling and support staff).
Research shows that even where collective bargaining is banned, teachers still come together to form associations (Lieberman, 2002). In fact, where collective
bargaining is banned, teachers form more associations
because no single organization can acquire a monopoly, as is typically the case in collective bargaining states.
The Community of Interest Model offers teachers the
best of both worlds—the right to collectively bargain, but
also the right to choose among many organizations to
represent them. The competitive market of the Community of Interest Model provides representation for teachers, representation units that specialize in a teacher’s particular field but at the same time cannot abuse teachers.
In typical collective bargaining states, unions gain
a monopoly of representation and can force dues payment, engage in political activity opposed by teachers
and remain indifferent to teacher demands—all symptoms of any agency that has a monopoly.
The Community of Interest Model maintains teacher representation but without monopolistic coercion
.
sues. For starters, school administrators and school
boards can only bargain with so many representation
organizations. Legislation would be required to set a
minimum percentage of teachers before an additional
bargaining unit could be created. Otherwise, districts
could end up with bargaining units with one or two
teachers.
Second, a basic, district-wide contract (or clauses
uniform to all contracts) might be necessary to cover
standard operating procedures such as class times,
holidays, organization charts, etc. to avoid multiple
governance structures and ensure a uniform school
calendar.
And finally, school boards may need to hire more
staff in order to negotiate additional contracts. Under a
traditional monopolistic collective bargaining system,
most school boards are already required to collectively
bargain with more than one union (certified staff, classified staff and administration).
The Community of Interest Model, however, carries
the traditional process to a greater degree of specialization. In such an environment, school boards could end
up negotiating with far more than three labor organizations.
Combining Models
There is no reason a district or state could not adopt
a combination of both models. The Competitive Representation Model simply creates an environment
where multiple agencies can compete for the right to
represent a body of teachers.
If multiple agencies can compete for the right to
represent one body of teachers, they could also compete to represent multiple bodies of teachers. A combination of the two models would simply create an
environment where multiple representation agencies
were competing in a market of multiple representation units (not unlike many advertising agencies
competing over contracts to advertise multiple different products).
It is possible that in such a labor system, the Washington Education Association might continue to represent elementary school teachers, a local law firm could
win the right to represent social studies teachers and
special education teachers could choose a nonprofit organization to bargain on their behalf.
Implementation Issues
To implement a Community of Interest Model,
states would need to address several procedural is-
8
Choice, Empowerment and Fairness
of years of experience and level of education. Where a
teacher falls on the scale determines salary regardless
of content area, teacher quality, or any other variable.
Such a system rewards time on the job and further education.
It does not incentivize behavior that improves teacher quality, such as professional development, more effort, or longer hours preparing for class or pedagogical experimentation. Additionally, all salary schedules
“max out” at a certain level of education and experience. Teachers who find themselves in that position
have no incentive to pursue any type of professional
improvement.
Like all reforms, the
Free Agency Model has
strengths and weaknesses.
Free Agency frees teachers from collectively bargained maximum salaries, permits teachers to
bargain for their specific
needs (flexible schedules,
job sharing, specific classroom needs, etc.) and does
not require that they find
fellow teachers who might
constitute a “community
of interest.”
Most importantly, if
implemented
correctly,
the best teachers would be
rewarded and the poorer
teachers would not. Poor
teachers who are continually denied extra compensation under the Free Agency Model might be incentivized to leave the profession and make way for better
teachers to take their place.
Another side effect of the Free Agency Model is the
empowerment of principals. Since the school board
could not possibly bargain with each teacher in the
district, the job would likely fall to principals. As a result, principals could have more power over budgets,
more influence over teacher pay and more power over
teacher behavior in general.
Decentralizing decision-making from large district
offices is sometimes termed “School Based Manage-
The Free Agency Model
The Free Agency Model envisions a labor system
where individual teachers, either in addition to or in
the absence of an existing collective bargaining agreement, can negotiate their own salary.
In a pure Free Agency Model, no unions or agencies
would collectively bargain. Each individual teacher
would negotiate his/her own salary and benefits. It is
unlikely such a system would emerge in the public sector. A more realistic possibility is the creation of a Free
Agency/Collective Bargaining hybrid model in which
a collective bargaining unit exists and negotiates on behalf
of the entire teacher population, but in addition to the
baseline contract, individual teachers could pursue additional salary and benefits.
Such labor systems have
long existed in the private
sector. Two notable examples are the Screen Actors Guild and the National
Football League Players Association.
In both cases, unions negotiate a baseline contract
with minimum standards
and minimum salaries.
Each individual actor or
football player is still welcome to negotiate beyond
the minimum. For example,
both Tom Cruise and Paris Hilton are members of the
Screen Actors Guild but Mr. Cruise makes considerably more money per film than Ms. Hilton.
Similarly, Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom
Brady and newly drafted rookies are both represented
by the National Football League Players Association,
but Mr. Brady is empowered to pursue an individual
contract far in excess of the league’s minimum salaries.
In the teacher market, free agency would empower
teachers to earn their own true value rather than being bound within a “salary schedule.” In almost all districts, the union bargains a pay scale that is a function
“Poor teachers
who are continually
denied extra
compensation ...
might be incentivized
to leave the profession
and make way for
better teachers to take
their place.”
9
Creating New Labor Models for Teachers in the 21st Century:
tistically significant positive effect. In fact, 10
of the studies found negative effects. In spite
of the depth and consistency of this negative
finding in the research literature, school districts continue to spend billions of dollars annually rewarding MA degrees.”
ment.” Many researchers argue that empowering principals is essential for improving education (See Wohlstetter and Mohrman, 1993 and Oki, 2009). Although
the Free Agency Model is not designed for that purpose, it would be a natural consequence of the system.
Potential weaknesses of the model include perceived
favoritism by administrators, teacher jealousy that affects moral and the transaction costs that individual
teachers must bear to negotiate their own contracts.
Furthermore, given the rigidity of the one-size-fitsall salary schedule, schools have few tools to attract
teachers in more competitive fields such as math and
science. In a study conducted for the National Center
on Performance Incentives, Podgursky notes:
Charter and Private
School Experience
“These salary schedules for teachers contrast with the situation in most other professions. In medicine, pay of doctors and nurses
varies by specialty. Even within the same
hospital or HMO, pay will differ by specialty
field. In higher education there are large differences in pay between faculty by teaching
fields. Faculty pay structures in most higher
education institutions are flexible. Starting pay is usually market-driven and institutions will often match counter-offers for
more senior faculty whom they wish to retain.”
The Free Agency Model cannot be found in any
traditional public school in the United States. The
model is quite vibrant, however, in the charter school
and private school teacher labor markets. In fact, the
Thomas Fordham Foundation commissioned a study
that showed that 90 percent of charter school teachers
arrive at a contract through a process other than collectively bargaining.
It is helpful to examine the difference between our
current bargaining system and how charter and private
schools use the free agency system so that we might
understand how it would affect public schools if the
process were ever adopted.
Current public school collective bargaining processes—and the agreements they establish—do not reward
the right type of behavior. Research indicates there is
no connection between teacher experience or teacher
education and student performance. Michael Podgursky, noted education researcher and economist writes:
Podgusrky observes that because of a lack of free
agency rights in the education labor market, many
teachers are “teaching outside their field,” which is a
polite way to say they are teaching in subjects for which
they have little to no training.
His research highlights that schools have a difficult
time hiring trained math and science teachers because
the salary schedule serves as a “price ceiling” and distorts the market.
In 2001, the U.S. Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that
requires that all new teachers hired in districts that receive Title I funds must be trained in the subject they
teach.
The act will increase pressure to find math and science teachers (among others) and exacerbate the problem caused by uniform salary schedules.
Given that the public school collective bargaining
system fails to reward factors that actually improve
student learning and prevents hiring good teachers in
“Rigid salary schedules would not be as
costly if the factors rewarded, teacher experience and graduate education, were strong
predictors of teacher productivity. Surveys
of the education production function literature find little support for a positive effect of
teacher Masters Degrees and teacher experience have little effect beyond the first few
years (Hanushek, Kain, O’Brien and Rivkin,
2005). Hanushek (2003) reports that of 41
“value-added” estimates of the effect of education levels on teacher effectiveness (primarily MA’s), not a single study found a sta-
10
Choice, Empowerment and Fairness
high-demand fields, are private or charter schools doing a better job? Research suggests they are.
Research by University of Massachusetts professor
Dale Ballou shows that private and charter schools use
salary schedules but also respect teacher free agency.
It is common for charter and private schools to go
“off schedule” to hire teachers in high-demand fields
and to retain teachers who are being offered better salaries elsewhere. The data show that most charter (71
percent) and private schools (63
percent) use something similar to a salary schedule but that
in most cases (77 percent) the
schools use a different schedule
that accounts for performance
and expertise.
More than 30 percent of
charter and private schools surveyed used “off-schedule” monetary incentives to hire teachers
in high-demand areas such as
science and math.
Research by Cynthia Price
on behalf of the American Association of School Administrators supports Ballou’s findings. Her detailed analysis
of financial incentives in the
teacher labor market force her
to conclude financial incentives
that free agency bargaining or off schedule monetary
incentives can provide will alleviate teacher vacancies
in hard to staff positions.
In all, the data suggests that private and charter
schools are benefiting by giving teachers labor rights
they do not have in the collectively bargained public
school contracts. Introducing free agency to public
schools might provide a mechanism for administrators
to hire the best teachers in all subjects and all grade
levels.
people and organizations need to take advantage of the
new environment created by policy changes.
Adopting a Competitive Representation Model will
only enhance teacher choices if other organizations,
law firms and non-profits actually enter the newly created market and offer alternatives to existing monopolies. Establishing a Community of Interest Model will
only launch new opportunities for teachers if they are
made aware of the new system and mobilize to create
new bargaining units. A Free
Agency Model will only work
if teachers take advantage of
the chance to seek personalized rewards.
In short, policy and legal
changes can only create opportunities, but other steps
must be taken to fill the vacuum created by such changes.
Part of a successful reform
movement requires cultural
changes. Teachers, administrators and union officials
must be introduced to potential reforms early and brought
into the process of hammering out the details.
If mistrust develops between reform-minded legislators, think tanks and activists
and the very education community they seek to reform, little will be accomplished.
In turn, steps must be taken to make teachers, administrators and union officials receptive to new ways
of conducting labor relations.
Community outreach extends to additional vital
stakeholders such as the general public, parents and
potential representation providers. Non-membership
organizations, solo entrepreneurs, negotiators, lawyers
and collective bargaining companies are all capable of
providing bargaining services. Outreach could best be
accomplished by creating a broad coalition with membership that includes representatives from each of the
stakeholder groups identified above.
A combination of consultation, education and advocacy creates the best possibility for successfully reforming the labor relations system.
“A combination
of consultation,
education and
advocacy creates
the best possibility
for successfully
reforming the
labor-relations
system”
Educating Teachers
About Their Choices
Changes in law are only the first step to reforming
the teacher labor market. For real change to occur,
11
Creating New Labor Models for Teachers in the 21st Century:
Bibliography
Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and
Governance, Mar. 2006.
Lieberman, Myron. (2002). “Liberating Teachers; Towards Marker Competition in Teacher Representation.”
Policy Analysis 450 (August).
Lankford, H. and J. Wyckoff. “The Changing Structure of Teacher Compensation, 1970-94.” Economics of
Education Review 16.4 (1997): 371-84. Print.
Luekens, M.T., Lyter, D.M., & Fox, E.E. (2004).
“Teacher Attrition and Mobility: Results from the Teacher Follow-up Survey, 2000-01.” Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from
http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/2004301.pdf.
National Council on Teacher Quality at http://
www.nctq.org/p/
Oki, S. 2009. “Outrageous Learning: An Education
Manifesto.” Washington Policy Center. Seattle, Washington.
Podgursky, M. 2009 “A Market-Based Perspective on
Teacher Compensation Reform,” Chapter 4 of Performance Incentives, Brookings Institution Press.
Podgursky, M. 2009. “Market-Based Reform of
Teacher Compensation.” Issue Brief. Institute for Public
School Innovation. University of Texas. (November)
Podgursky, M. 2008. “Teams Versus Bureaucracies:
Personnel Policy, Wage-Setting and Teacher Quality in
Traditional Public, Charter and Private Schools,” In
Mark Berends, Matthew Springer and Herbert Walberg
(eds) Charter School Outcomes. New York: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, pp. 61-84.
Podgursky, M. and D. Ballou. “Personnel Policy in
Charter Schools,” Thomas B. Fordham Foundation,
Aug. 2001. Web.
Prince, C. D. (2002). “Higher pay in hard-to-staff
schools: The case for financial incentives.” Arlington,
VA: American Association of School Administrators,
Retrieved from http://www.aasa.org/issues_and_insights/issues_dept/higher_pay.pdf.
Ballou, B and M. Podgursky. 1998. “Teacher Recruitment and Retention in Public and Private Schools,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 17, No. 3,
(June), pp. 393-417.
Ballou, D. (2001). “Pay for performance in public
and private schools,” Economics of Education Review,
20(1), 51–61.
Consortium for Policy Research in Education
(1993). “Designing High-Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management,” San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Duplantis, M and T. Chandler and T. Geske. (1995).
“The growth and impact of teachers’ unions in states
without collective bargaining legislation.” Economics of
Education Review Volume 14 (2), pp. 167-178.
https://west.exch026.ser verdata.net/owa/redir.aspx?C=-ZxokmbZEE2ZyhProILGBmRBXlttp88IzSyZjj63GSZwcglj1eXgZ1QuTK8PI9zJflCqkh
MKwds.&URL=http percent3a percent2f percent2fwww.sciencedirect.com percent2fscience percent3f_
ob percent3dArticleURL percent26_udi percent3dB6VB9-3Y45T7R-V percent26_user percent3d10
percent26_coverDate percent3d06 percent2F30 percent2F1995 percent26_rdoc percent3d1 percent26_
fmt percent3dfull percent26_orig percent3dgateway
percent26_origin percent3dgateway percent26_cdi
percent3d5921 percent26_sort percent3dd percent26_
docanchor percent3d percent26view percent3dc
percent26_searchStrId percent3d1720113472 percent26_rerunOrigin percent3dgoogle percent26_acct
percent3dC000050221 percent26_version percent3d1
percent26_urlVersion percent3d0 percent26_userid
percent3d10 percent26mdGoldhaber, D., Hyung, J.,
DeArmond, M., Player, D. (2005). “Why Do So Few
Public School Districts Use Merit Pay?” Journal of Education Finance. 33, 262-289.
Grimshaw, D, J. Earnshaw and G. Hebson. “Private
Sector Provision of Supply Teachers: A Case of Legal
Swings and Professional Roundabouts.” Journal of Educational Policy May-June 18.3 (2003): 267-88.
Hatry, H. P., Greiner, J.M., Ashford, B.G. (1994). “Issues and Case Studies in Teacher Incentive Plans.” Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.
Hess, F. and M. West. “A Better Bargain: Overhauling Teacher Collective Bargaining for the 21st Century.”
Stinebrickner, T. ( 2001). “A Dynamic Model of
Teacher Labor Supply,” Journal of Labor Economics 19,
196–230.
Walsh, J and F. Kemerer, L. Maniotis (2010). “The
Educator’s Guide to Texas School Law: Seventh Edition.”
University of Texas Press.
12
Choice, Empowerment and Fairness
Footnotes
California, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Oklahoma and Washington all have school districts that
have decertified the NEA in favor of local only teacher
unions.
3
The National Education Association collected over
$300 million in dues for the 2010-11 fiscal year. Additionally, in 2011, the NEA Executive Committee voted
to double the “special projects” dues collection. These
funds are typically used for political lobbying. On the
state level, the Ohio Education Association increased
fees by $50 in 2011 for the sole purpose of fighting for
the repeal of Senate Bill 5 which curtailed teacher collective bargaining rights.
1
About the Author
Shelley Manweller has been a professional educator in Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington
state since 1999. She graduated from the University
of Missouri-Columbia and currently serves as an
independent education consultant specializing in
standards integration, teaching practice assessment
and reform and content knowledge application. She
is also a nationwide Math Connects consultant for
McGraw-Hill Companies. She resides in Ellensburg,
Wash.
The Lynden Professional Educators Association
recently reported that Washington Education Association dues are approximately $800 per year, but local
only teacher union dues are approximately $550 less at
$250 per year.
2
13