Rethinking the Iron Triangle:
The Role of Organized Interests in the Making of Teacher
Evaluation Policy
Leslie Finger
Department of Government, Harvard University
October 1, 2015
In 2009, teacher evaluations in most states did not take into account student performance. By the end
of 2013, however, 40 states required some that form student achievement be included (NCTQ 2011, 2014).
The Obama administration catalyzed this dramatic change with Race to the Top (RTTT), a competitive grant
program which called for states to establish teacher evaluation systems including student achievement as a
“significant” factor (Howell 2015, Meredith 2013). After RTTT, the Obama administration required such
policies from states seeking waivers from the provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). For both programs, the Obama administration granted wide leeway in how states might define “significant,” and, indeed,
they defined it a variety of ways, from requiring that 50% of a teacher’s evaluation come from state assessments (Florida) to those that did not incorporate student growth in evaluation ratings at all (Massachusetts)
or minimally and with high local discretion (Wyoming). Even among those states that weighed student
growth heavily, there was variation, as some states used a fixed percentage (e.g., Tennessee - 50%, Connecticut - 45%, Minnesota - 35%) while others did not, instead requiring an adequate student achievement
score in order to receive a high overall score (e.g., Delaware, Oregon, Kentucky).
The fact that some states incorporated student growth as a high proportion of evaluations is surprising
given that teachers’ unions oppose teacher evaluations that count student achievement as a large component,
and all U.S. states have teachers’ unions.1 Indeed, the literature on vested interests and path dependence
predicts that labor groups with a stake in the status quo should block policy change (e.g., Pierson 2004).
What, then, explains why some states managed to pass such laws? The conventional wisdom attributes this
variation to the strength of teachers’ unions across states, holding that state-level teachers’ unions use whatever electoral resources and legal advantages they have to block or water down policies they oppose (Moe
2011). Yet, there is very little empirical work showing a relationship between teachers’ union strength and
1
Note that by “union” I do not mean that there is necessarily collective bargaining. I simply use the term to mean an occupational
labor group representing the majority of the workers in a certain class for a variety of purposes.
1
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NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship
the nature of teacher evaluations and, surprisingly, what exists on other policies is mixed and inconclusive
(e.g., Renzulli and Roscigno 2005).
My dissertation seeks to explain why, in a context where the federal government encouraged all states
to pass teacher evaluations including student achievement as a “significant” component through RTTT and
NCLB waivers, the degree to which states have incorporated student growth2 has varied in ways that do not
align with teachers’ union strength. Consistent with the inconclusive literature I cite above, I fail to find
a relationship between the incorporation of student achievement in teacher evaluation and the influence of
teachers’ unions (see Figure 1). This raises the question: If not teachers’ unions, who? To answer this, I
look to research on interest groups beyond teachers’ unions.
Teachers' Union Strength and Teacher Evaluations
Degree of Student Growth in Evaluations, 2012
0
1
2
3
NC
UT SC
MS
AZ
LATN
OK
FL
NV
CO
AR
ID
NM
KY KS
IL MD
INMN OR
WV WA
TX
0
GA
VA
AL
OH DE PA
MICT
HIRI
MO SD IANE
ND
CA
WI
WY
MA
NH
2
4
Teachers' Union Strength Score
AK
NY
MENJ
MT
VT
6
Figure 1: Bivariate Relationship between State Teachers’ Union Strength and Teacher Evaluations
Evaluation ratings from NCTQ. Ratings are the following: 0 = no objective evidence in evaluations, 1= some objective evidence,
2=student growth is a significant portion of evaluations, 3=student growth is the preponderant factor in evaluations, meaning a
teacher cannot do well overall without doing well on the student growth portion. Teachers’ union strength score is an index
incorporating labor law, teachers’ union campaign spending, teachers’ union revenue, state education spending, and median class
size, created using principal component analysis.
I find that teacher evaluation policymaking is more complicated than the simple hypothesis that teachers’ union strength determines education reform. By “education reform,” I mean accountability-oriented
education policy, such as school choice, merit pay, standardized testing policies or teacher evaluations. I
find that key to the establishment of teacher evaluation policies with high levels of student achievement is
2
I use “student growth” and “student achievement” interchangeably. They both mean increases in student learning, which can come
from standardized state or district-level tests, or other types of assessments given in a school or classroom.
2
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the work of groups advocating education reform, or “education reform groups.” There are two components
to my findings: First, based on a 50-state regression analysis, I find that the presence of education reform
groups drives the creation of student outcome-oriented teacher evaluations, regardless of strong teachers’
unions. Second, using qualitative data collected through fieldwork in four state case studies, I find that
different types of reform groups pursue evaluations using dissimilar avenues: whereas business groups focus their efforts on the state legislature, citizen groups’ work through the education bureaucracy, including
teachers’ unions in collaborative processes. These findings may generalize to policy areas beyond teacher
evaluation; they suggest that the nature of state education reform groups may shape the coalition involved in
crafting and passing reform. Moreover, my quantitative findings suggest that reform groups may establish
themselves where teachers’ unions are strongest, thus explaining the lack of a general relationship between
teachers’ unions and education reform policy outcomes in the existing literature.
Teacher evaluations have been held out as one of the most important school improvement strategies.
Research supports that the quality of classroom teachers is the most important in-school factor for student
achievement (Chetty et al. 2014), and many consider teacher evaluations a potential policy lever for accomplishing this. At the same time, teacher evaluations fundamentally affect the careers of teachers and inspire
heated opposition. The recent fight between the New York State United Teachers and Governor Cuomo over
New York’s teacher evaluation attests to this. Because this policy is potentially of great importance for the
achievement of children and because it has generated great controversy and public interest, it is important
that we understand the political dynamics of teacher evaluation policymaking.
Additionally, this study contributes to our understanding of state-level education policymaking, which
is not adequately studied. Partly this is a data issue since it is easier to rely on a large dataset or a single case
study. Indeed, scholars tend to carry out case studies of federal policymaking (DeBray-Pelot 2007) or use
rich local-level data sets, like the School and Staffing Survey to gauge the determinants of district education
policy (Ballou 2001). Yet, state education law trumps local policy and the amount of state action dwarfs that
of the federal government. This study shifts the focus to the state-level of education policymaking, argubly
the most importance governance level, and where there is still much to be learned.
Literature
Why have states’ new teacher evaluations varied in their incorporation of student achievement? Some scholars would point to teachers’ unions, arguing that teachers’ unions dominate education policymaking through
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their hold on policymakers and their outsized resources. Some scholars utilize the “iron triangle” metaphor
to explain teachers’ unions’ relationship with policymakers. “Iron triangles” are impenetrable, mutuallyadvantageous relationships between producer groups, the agencies that are meant to regulate them, and
the congressional committees that oversee them. Peterson et al. (2014) apply this metaphor in the case of
teachers’ unions, emphasizing how “by means of steady communication and financial contributions” (7),
education committee members in legislatures and teachers’ union lobbyists form close relationships. They
work in collaboration with education departments who distribute benefits and craft education regulations.
For Moe (2011), this is only one aspect of teachers’ unions’ control of education policymaking. Moe
argues that teachers’ unions fight in statehouses and at the grassroots to protect those policies that benefit
their members while blocking those that hurt them. According to Moe, education reform is a threat to
teachers’ jobs and benefits, and, as a result, unions engage in the “politics of blocking” using every pressure
point available to them - pressuring school boards, going through the courts, initiating ballot measures, etc.
(Moe 2003, 2005, 2011). They can do this given their large membership and campaign war-chest. For
example, they turn out in higher numbers than non-teachers for elections particularly relevant to education,
like the elections of school boards members (Moe 2005), a point supported by Anzia (2011).
For these scholars, teachers’ unions’ power outweighs the influence of any other group in education,
allowing unions to call the shots in education policymaking. The fact that teachers’ unions are the largest
campaign contributors in the U.S. is cited as evidence of this, and some scholars have found a relationship
between teachers’ union campaign donations and reform policy (Hartney 2014, Hartney and Flavin 2011).
However, among the limited studies that have been done on the role of teachers’ unions in state policymaking, most findings have been mixed and inconsistent. Some studies fail to find a relationship (Shelly 2008,
Shober et al. 2006), while those that do tend to do so with important qualifications, such as teachers’ unions
impacting not the existence of policies, but their strength (Renzulli and Roscigno 2005) or union influence
on policy enactment waning over time (Meredith 2013).
Anecdotal evidence also raises suspicion of the above relationship. States known to have powerful
unions like New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan have some of the highest education policy ratings from organizations in favor of education reform, namely the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) and the
American Legislative Exchange Commission (ALEC) (Ladner and Lips 2012, NCTQ 2014). On the other
side, states with weak unions, like Nebraska, Kansas, and South Dakota receive low policy ratings from
NCTQ and ALEC.
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It may be that teachers’ unions are up against strong opponents whose presence as advocates and penetration of the bureaucracy and the legislature rival their own. Heclo (1978) argues that “[l]ooking for the
closed triangles of control, we tend to miss the fairly open networks of people that increasingly impinge
upon government” (88). Indeed, there are diverse reformer voices in education reform policymaking, which
have been documented at the federal level and local level: In her aptly titled book chapter, “Dismantling
Education’s ‘Iron Triangle,”’ DeBray-Pelot (2007) finds that in the years leading up to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education establishment began to experience major competition for influence at the federal
level, particularly from conservative groups and centrist think tanks. Others have highlighted the role of civil
rights groups in the passage of NCLB (Debray-Pelot and McGuinn 2009, Rhodes 2011). At the local level,
foundations favoring education reform have had a large impact in various urban school districts (Reckhow
2013). At the state level, which is of most importance for this study, there is evidence that where policy entrepreneurs utilized external and internal networks to sell their ideas, they most successfully adopted
school choice laws (Mintrom 2009, Mintrom and Vergari 1998). These studies suggest that actors other that
teachers’ unions might play a role in the establishment of student outcome-heavy teacher evaluations.
In sum, there is little scholarship that addresses the determinants of state-level education reform, much
less teacher evaluations. The literature that exists argues that teachers’ unions’ opposition determines education reform policies without strong empirical backing, and there are studies that suggest that education
reform advocacy groups matter. My dissertation heeds this suggestion.
Methodology and Preliminary Quantitative Findings
My dissertation examines variation in the weight of student achievement in teacher evaluation laws by taking
into account the full range of interest groups involved in state-level education. I do this using a “nested”
research approach, which has been used widely in comparative politics research, and incorporates both
qualitative and quantitative methods (Lieberman 2005). Nested approaches iterate between “small-N” and
regression analyses, as the researcher alternates between building and testing her theory. In my project, I
first used a small-N analysis to build my theory, I then carried out a regression to test my theory, and I am
now in the process of carrying out a second small-N analysis as a deeper test of my theory. My background
in comparative politics fieldwork and literature makes me well-equipped to utilize this approach in a context
in which it is rarely used - for the study of American politics.
I started out my study with inductive case studies of Colorado, Oregon, and Delaware. I chose these
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states because they presented an interesting puzzle: they varied in the strength of their teachers’ unions,
with the strongest unions in Oregon (11 in strength by my ranking3 ) and Delaware (13) and somewhat
weaker unions in Colorado (32), yet all had passed outcome-heavy teacher evaluations. I observed that
reform groups, not teachers’ unions, seemed to play a crucial role in the passage of teacher evaluation laws
that weight achievement heavily.
I then tested my new hypothesis that reformers are critical to the passage of outcome-oriented evaluation reform with a 50-state dataset. I derived from the literature the other potential causes of outcomeoriented evaluation reform to include as controls in my analysis: applying to RTTT (Meredith 2013), having
neighbors adopting outcome-heavy evaluation reform (Mintrom 2009), having a lower achieving student
population (Doyle 2006), having a Republican governor, legislature or a more conservative political ideology (Wong and Langevin 2007), having a strong state education chief or more centralized institutions
of education governance (Manna and Harwood 201), and, of course, having strong teachers’ unions (Moe
2011).
To measure my key explanatory variable - reformers - I used an indicator for whether states had a Policy
Innovators in Education (PIE) Network member in their state. PIE members are state-level organizations
committed to education reform and advocacy. Examples include branches of Stand for Children and 50CAN, in addition to independent state-level groups. For my dependent variable - the degree to which teacher
evaluations rely on student growth - I used NCTQ’s ratings; NCTQ gives states one of four ratings based
on the degree to which the state’s teacher evaluation policy incorporates objective student achievement.
According to NCTQ staff, the organization conducts exhaustive research of both statute and regulations
when giving their ratings. Their ratings should be a reliable indicator of state policy.
I found a strong, statistically significant relationship between the student growth-reliance of teacher
evaluations and the presence of a reform group in the state, all else equal. I did not find a relationship
between teachers’ union strength and the inclusion of high levels of student achievement in evaluation in
either bivariate regressions or with controls. I also found that, of the controls listed above, having a lowachieving student population was the most strongly related to the passage of outcome-oriented evaluation
reform. While I cannot rule out that unobservable characteristics impact both the presence of education reform advocacy groups and subsequent reform, there clearly is a strong association between my hypothesized
explanatory variable and evaluation reform with heavily weighted student outcomes.
3
See notes to Table 1 for explanation of my rankings.
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Table 1: Case Selection
Kentucky
West Virginia
Minnesota
Wisconsin
low
low
low
Split
30
low
low
low
D
23
high
high
medium
R
16
high
high
medium
R
15
Predicted Probability of Evals with Significant Student Growth**
.105
.133
.0004e-5
.0005e-3
50-State Median Predicted Probability = .0003
Explanatory Variable
Reform Group?
Dependent Variable
Significant growth in evaluations
yes
yes
no
no
yes
yes
no
no
Potential Confounders
Achievement
Graduation Rates
Urbanization
Legislative Control Year of Eval Law
Teachers’ Unions Ranking* (out of 50)
*Ranking calculated from principal component analysis combining data on right to work law, collective bargaining law, the number of teachers’ union lobbyists per state legislator, teachers’ union
campaign contributions to state races, teachers’ union revenue, state spending per student, the median pupil-teacher ratio, and the ratio of employer to employee pension contributions.
**From logistic regression that regressed student achievement as at least a significant factor in teacher evaluations in 2010, according to NCTQ’s ranking, on the size of the metropolitan population
in that state in 2000, the number of books acquired in the school system in 2007 to 2008, the party of the governor in 2010, the percentage of students proficient in math in 2007, if at least 5% of
districts or a large metropolitan district has performance pay (as a simple measure of openness to innovation in education policy), and the percentage of the population that is white.
I next undertook comparative case study fieldwork in West Virginia, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. I used my regression results to choose two pairs of states with similar probabilities of establishing
outcome-oriented evaluation reform according to my regressions’ predicted values and similar values on
potential confounders. The first pair had a predicted probability of passing growth-heavy reform that was
above the median predicted probability for all states. These “most likely” states (West Virginia and Kentucky) had a low-achieving population, low graduation rates, low urbanization rates, and Democratic or split
legislature. My “least likely” states, the pair whose predicted probability was below the median (Minnesota
and Wisconsin), had a high-achieving population, high graduation rates, medium urbanization rates, and
Republican legislatures. In all four states, the teachers’ unions were relatively strong: in Minnesota and
Wisconsin, they were among the strongest and in Kentucky and West Virginia, they were in the middle of
the pack. Within each pairing, only one state had a reform group and subsequently passed reform. My plan
was to analyze these cases by comparing the states within each pair and by examining the process of teacher
evaluation policymaking within each state individually. I use process-tracing to do the latter; this entails
testing the observable implications of my theory against those of rival theories using data gathered from
interviews and documents.
I have already carried out three of my four case studies. I spent the first half of 2015 in Kentucky,
West Virginia, and Minnesota. I spent about one month in each location and interviewed state education
commissioners, state teachers’ union leaders, other professional association leaders, reform group activists,
business group lobbyists, directors of foundations, members of state boards of education, governors, state
department of education staff, state policymakers, state legislature staff, local superintendents, local union
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leaders, and others in an effort to trace how teacher evaluations were designed and passed in each state,
and what role interest groups played in that process. I also spoke to people from relevant national reform
organizations, including the Gates Foundation, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, the New Teacher
Project, the Southern Regional Education Board, and the Hope Street Group. With each participant, I carried
out an unstructured interview lasting approximately an hour. Including the interviews in my theory-building
cases, I carried out a total of 260 interviews. I have not yet done my Wisconsin research, but I will do it over
the course of this year via phone interviews and fieldwork during winter break.
Preliminary Qualitative Findings: The Mechanisms of Reform
My West Virginia/Kentucky and Minnesota/Wisconsin comparisons thus far show support for the relationship between education reform advocacy groups and outcome-oriented evaluation reform. I also have begun
to map the mechanisms linking education reform advocates to evaluation reform. My fieldwork indicates
that there are two paths, one sparked by the presence of business reform groups and the other by citizen
reform groups. The key distinction between the groups is that the former explicitly aims to represent business interests in its education efforts whereas the latter does not. The existence of business or citizen reform
groups determines whether reformer power runs through the bureaucracy or the legislature. In both cases,
reform groups encourage to the involvement of national organizations, who support their bureaucratic (citizen groups) or legislative (business groups) efforts. The resulting law might be equally strong, but will
vary in the degree to which the policy is spelled out in statute or delegates responsibility to the bureaucracy,
respectively. I spell out my hypothesized mechanisms below in italics.
Citizen Groups
Citizen groups open up the “education iron triangle” via bureaucratic positions. Members of citizen education reform groups are education thinkers and activists in the state, and may be appointed or hired as
bureaucratic leaders (in contrast to those affiliated with business reform groups that are likely in business
careers or in more business-related parts of the bureaucracy). Once in positions of leadership, they can bulk
up the reformer presence within the bureaucracy, and they can set the policy agenda. This was the case
in Kentucky, where the presence of the Prichard Committee, a citizen organization founded in the 1980’s,
had several members on the Board of Education. The Board appointed Terry Holliday Commissioner of
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Education, consulting the Prichard Committee when doing so. Board members told me that Holliday was
hired because he was a collaborative reformer. He took the lead in creating teacher evaluations.
In citizen reformer states, national foundations come in to aid the group’s work. This occurred in
Kentucky as well, where Prichard’s presence led to the Gates Foundation’s involvement in the state. A
senior program officer at the Gates Foundation told me that Prichard was crucial to their decision to work in
Kentucky. They were deliberately looking to work in a low-income state that didn’t prohibit linking teacher
and student data. They narrowed their search to Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and West Virginia, my
comparison case for Kentucky, but chose Kentucky because it had a “community for reform.”
With reformers in the bureaucracy and foundation support, the policymaking work occurs outside the
legislature. In these states, teachers’ unions are active participants but must grapple with reformers as
bureaucratic agenda-setters and citizen participants. In Kentucky, Holliday’s leadership harnessed Gates
Foundation support to create a collaborative process where research was central to the conversation. It may
be that citizen reformers use their agenda-setting power in the bureaucracy to do the “softening up” work
that Kingdon describes, “getting [people] used to new ideas and building acceptance for their proposals”
(Kingdon 1984: 128). While neither Gates nor Holliday advocated for specific proposals, they brought
the issue to the table and facilitated the creation of an environment where outcome-heavy proposals were
seriously considered. In citizen reformer states, the final legislation delegates responsibility for crafting the
evaluation back to the bureaucracy, which has already taken the lead and opened the “iron triangle.”
Business Groups
In the second path, the main reform group is a state business organization, like a state Chamber of Commerce. Lacking links to the education bureaucracy, business education reformers focus on passing legislation, rather than relying on behind-the-scenes collaborative processes. Thus, they do not overcome the
“education iron triangle,” but must utilize their “first face of power” tangible resources rather than the more
subtle agenda-setting that comes with the “second face of power” (Bachrach and Baratz 1962). In Minnesota, when Republicans took control of the state legislature in 2011, the state’s Business Partnership and
Chamber of Commerce planned to push for outcome-heavy evaluations.
These groups get attention from national organizations, which help craft language and assist with generating legislative support. These organizations are distinct from the national foundations mentioned in the
first path because they directly assist reformers with policy content and strategy rather than funding col9
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laborative buy-in processes. This occurred in Minnesota where the Business Partnership worked with the
Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and brought about 40 freshmen legislators to FEE’s 2010
yearly summit. Afterward, the business groups encouraged a Republican freshman who had been highly
influenced by that convening to sponsor a bill. That freshman and the business groups worked closely with
FEE and the New Teacher Project to draft and push a bill that more explicitly spelled out the nature of teacher
evaluations in statute than had been done in Kentucky. As the iron triangle had remained unbreached, the education bureaucracy was strongly against the business-backed bill, and the business reformers had to endure
a veto and a government shutdown (caused by other issues as well) before a slightly weaker, but still quite
strong, version of their bill passed that included student growth as 35%. They made sure the percentage was
enshrined in statute, rather then left to the deliberations of an unfavorable bureaucracy.
In sum, my cases suggest that the nature of the education advocacy group impacts the policymaking
avenue of education reform, who is included in the reform coalition, and the degree to which the final policy
is spelled out in statute. After further analyzing my cases, I will do an additional quantitative test to ascertain
whether the behavior of different groups that I observe holds across states.
Conclusion and Next Steps
My preliminary work provides evidence for the proposition that outcome-oriented teacher evaluations occur
as a result of the work of education advocacy reform groups. I have considerable work yet to do to detail
the process through which this occurs, and how it varies based on the type of reform group in the state. I
will continue working through the data I have collected so far (and will collect this year) to this end, and
will subsequently probe the generalizeability of my citizen/business theory in other states. I also anticipate
applying my findings in other policy areas in order to show that the impact of education reformers is not
only specific to teacher evaluation policy.
My study is timely and important. There is ample study of how various education interventions impact
children. However, these policies must be passed and implemented before any of the well-studied impacts
can come to fruition. Yet there has been little study of how to achieve controversial education policies.
These processes are no simple matter. They are fraught with politics. If we are to understand how to
improve education, we must study not just whether certain policies work, but how they manage to become
policy, taking into account all the attendant interests and advocates that entails.
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