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From the Schoolhouse to the Statehouse:
Teacher Union Political Activism and State Education Reform Policy
Michael Hartney†
Ph.D. Student
Department of Political Science
University of Notre Dame
[email protected]
Patrick Flavin
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Baylor University
[email protected]

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2009 Annual Conference on State Politics and
Policy in Chapel Hill, NC; and to the National Council on Teacher Quality in Washington, DC. We thank
David Campbell, John Griffin, Jane Hannaway, Eric Hanushek, Andrea McAtee, Susan Moore Johnson,
Michael Podgursky, Benjamin Radcliff, and participants at the University of Notre Dame’s Rooney
Center for the Study of American Democracy workshop for helpful comments.
†
Corresponding author. University of Notre Dame, Department of Political Science, 217 O’Shaughnessy
Hall, Notre Dame, IN, 46556.
Abstract
Elementary and secondary education policymaking in the states is heavily influenced by the
political bargaining of various actors, with teacher unions as one of the most important. Yet,
previous studies that have assessed the impact of teacher unions on education reform have used
problematic measures of their actual political influence, instead opting for a broader measure of
membership or collective bargaining power. In contrast, we measure teacher union political
activity by calculating the percentage of campaign contributions to candidates for state office
that come from teacher unions relative to all contributions. Using this measure, we find that
teacher union political activity strongly predicts fewer reform-oriented state education policies
such as school choice and performance pay for teachers, while previous measures of teacher
union strength bear little relationship to a state’s adoption of these reform policies. These
findings highlight the broader importance of paying careful attention to how political influence is
operationalized in studies that assess the role organized interests play in shaping state policies.
State politics scholars have long debated the importance of organized interests in the
policymaking process (Berry 1997; Jacoby and Schneider 2001; Hunter, Bunk, and Wilson
2002). For example, Gray et al. (2004, 419) ask whether the overall density and diversity of
interest groups within a state impacts policy outcomes and conclude that, “the politics of interest
representation seem to influence public policy only at the margins.” However, this line of
research rarely accounts for the extreme heterogeneity that exists among groups, thereby limiting
the conclusions that can be drawn about the capacity of interest groups to influence public policy
in the American states. For example, some groups – such as public sector employee unions – are
explicitly advantaged (from an organizing standpoint) by collective bargaining laws that create
powerful incentives for government employees to join a labor union. Even though the United
States Supreme Court has ruled that state employees cannot be compelled to join labor unions, it
has enabled state legislatures to maintain so-called “agency fee provisions” in their collective
bargaining statutes – provisions that essentially compel state employees to pay a fee to the union
interest group.1
To assess whether state-advantaged interest groups leverage political influence in the
policymaking process, we analyze the relationship between teacher union political activism and
five salient state education reform policies. Teacher unions provide a unique lens for us to
address this broader question of public sector union influence, while simultaneously addressing a
more specific problem in the education politics literature regarding how best to measure teacher
union influence itself. Using our newly developed measure of teacher union political influence,
we find that states with more politically active teacher unions are significantly less likely to
adopt an array of education reform policies that teacher unions traditionally oppose. More
1
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977). Twenty-eight states have labor laws that empower
public sector employee unions to collect agency fees from public sector workers who choose not to join a union.
1
broadly, these findings reveal further evidence that organized interests, especially those
associated with and advantaged by state governments, can exert sizeable influence on public
policy outcomes in the American states.
Previous Studies of Teacher Union Political Influence
It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that politics – once famously characterized as
the study of “who gets what, when, and how” (Lasswell 1936) – influences education policy
more than any other domestic policy issue in American life. After all, education policymaking is
a uniquely shared responsibility of local, state, and federal actors who collectively comprise a
“tangled web” of school governance (Epstein 2004). Consequently, the politics of education
policymaking is cluttered as organized interests, public-sector bureaucracies, and fragmented
political authorities decide who gets “what, when, and how” within and across three competing
levels of government. Though scholarly interest in education politics has increased in recent
years, (Berkman and Plutzer 2006; Manna 2006; McGuinn 2006; Moe 2009), little attention has
been devoted to assessing the degree to which organized teacher interests influence state
education policymaking.
This inattention is troubling given that observers traditionally classify teacher unions as
among the most active and powerful interest groups in state politics. For example, in one biannual survey of state legislatures, legislators generally ranked their state’s teachers union as the
most active and effective lobbying entity in the state capitol, outpacing the business community,
trial lawyers, doctors, utilities, bankers, environmentalists, and even state AFL-CIO affiliates
(Hrebenar and Thomas 2004; Moe 2006a). Moreover, teacher unions are advantaged by the fact
that the policies they seek to control are largely decided by public officials who are elected in
low turnout and low interest elections such as state legislators, chief state school officers, and
2
members of state and local boards of education. Local school board elections typically report
voter turnout no greater than 15 percent; and for those states that elect important state education
officials (chief state school officers and state board of education members) teacher union interest
groups can typically expect minimal public awareness and participation (Epstein 2004). Perhaps
not surprisingly then, a recent study found that teacher union-endorsed school board candidates
win 76% of their elections compared to just 31% among non-union endorsed candidates (Moe
2006a). The extent of these political advantages results in an unusual and understudied labormanagement relationship in which teacher unions (i.e. labor) help elect many of the
policymakers (i.e. management) with whom the teacher unions bargain and rely upon for
sympathetic policies tied to their professional career advancement as public employees.
Measuring Teacher Union Political Influence
Despite the well-chronicled activism of teacher unions in state and local electoral politics
(Hrebenar and Thomas 2004; Moe 2006a, 2006b, 2009), to date only a handful of scholars have
examined the relationship between organized teacher interests and variation in state education
policy outputs (Mintrom 1997, 2000; Shen and Wong 2006; Shober, Manna, and Witte 2006).
Moreover, the studies that do exist tend to rely upon measures of interest group strength that we
argue are problematic for testing the actual political influence teacher unions are likely to exert
over the policymaking process. Indeed, many researchers concede that measuring variation in
teacher union power is an inherently challenging enterprise. As a result, early efforts often
centered on calculating the percentage of public school teachers within a state who were covered
by a collective bargaining agreement (Shen and Wong 2006).
In spite of scholarly consensus that teacher unions can remain influential in the
policymaking process absent the advantages of favorable collective bargaining laws (Conley
3
2003; Moe 2006b; Shober, Manna, and Witte 2006), the most current state politics research on
teacher union influence persists in operationalizing group strength based on membership density
and the favorability of applicable collective bargaining laws (Shen and Wong 2006; Shober,
Manna, and Witte 2006; Shelly 2008). For example, in a study of states’ charter school laws,
Shober, Manna, and Witte (2006) rely on the overall density of public sector unionism within a
state to conclude that teacher unions exhibit influence only over certain aspects of state charter
school policy. Similarly, Shen and Wong (2006) attempt to explain variation in important
provisions of charter school laws by measuring union influence based on the expansiveness of
states’ collective bargaining laws that govern the public school workforce. They too find limited
union influence across a variety of policy indicators related to charter schools. Finally, Shelly
(2008) measures union strength as the percentage of a state’s public school workforce belonging
to a union and finds that it is not significantly related to a state’s propensity to pass legislation
curtailing the federal No Child Left Behind policy reforms.
These studies raise the question: Is there a more accurate way to operationalize teacher
union political activism? We argue that this measurement challenge is at its core due to the fact
that teacher union collective bargaining and teacher union political activism are quite different
phenomena – an important distinction when evaluating the link between organized interests and
public policy outcomes. In Alabama, for example, state law does not explicitly require that
school districts empower teachers with collective bargaining rights. Although this may lead
some to conclude that Alabama teachers are politically weak, it would be a serious mistake to
assume that the state’s largest teachers union – the Alabama Education Association (AEA) –
plays an insignificant role in state politics. In fact, the AEA is often considered the most
powerful interest group by Alabama policymakers who point to the fact that the AEA generally
4
contributes a greater percentage of campaign contributions to state candidates for political office
than any other organized interest in Alabama (Orndorff 1998).
Our theoretical argument centers on the idea that a thorough understanding of interest
group influence requires an analytical approach that appropriately measures the extent to which
those interests are politically active, as opposed to organizationally powerful at an internal level.
If we accept that elected officials are first and foremost reelection seekers (Mayhew 1974), state
policymakers concerned with winning low turnout and low interest elections have strong
incentives to heed the preferences of the most organized and politically active interests in their
states. As Hrebenar and Thomas (2004) and Moe (2006a) have demonstrated empirically,
teacher unions are among the most politically active interests in state and local elections.
Therefore, if we expect that the linkage between teacher unions and education policy outputs is a
political one, a valid measurement of union “power” will necessarily move beyond collective
bargaining (a function that is mainly internal to the union itself) and toward a measure that
captures the political activism of teacher union interest groups in state capitols. We argue that a
more valid measure of teacher union political activism across the states can be obtained by
examining campaign contributions made by teacher unions to candidates for state office.
Consequently, we use this and three other traditional measures of teacher union activism in state
politics to empirically assess the link between teacher union political efforts and state education
policies. The four measures of teacher union political activism we employ in this study are:
(1) The favorability of state collective bargaining laws/policies for public school teachers (Shen
and Wong 2006)
(2) The number of National Education Association (NEA) members per 1,000 state residents
(Manna and Tydgat 2008)
5
(3) Overall public sector union density (Shober, Manna, and Witte 2006)
(4) Campaign contributions from teacher unions to candidates for state office
As outlined above, the first three measures are either replicated or constructed from
previous studies in the education politics and policy literature (Shen and Wong 2006; Shober,
Manna, and Witte 2006; Manna and Tydgat 2008; Shelly 2008). The last measure – teacher
union campaign contributions – is the first effort that we know of to move beyond density and
collective bargaining indicators to measure teacher union political influence. In order to obtain a
more precise measure for how active a state’s teacher union is in electoral politics, we use data
from the National Institute on Money in State Politics (followthemoney.org) – a campaign
finance database that gathers data on and tracks donations in state politics – to create a measure
of state teacher union giving averaged across 1998-2006. Specifically, our measure is the
percentage of contributions donated by state teacher union interest groups (primarily American
Federation of Teachers or National Education Association state affiliates) out of the total
contributions in a given state. To generate fair comparisons across states, we only include
contributions in electoral years in which at least some state legislators are up for election (which
in most states typically fall every two years) and do not include contributions made to federal
candidates, state political parties, or ballot initiatives. The proportion of total campaign
contributions from teacher unions in each state is presented in Table 1.
[Table 1 about here]
How does our measure compare to traditional measures of teacher union political
influence? Table 2 demonstrates why studies that use measures of teacher union density and
collective bargaining policies paint an incomplete picture of union influence. Teacher union
campaign contributions are weakly correlated with these alternative measures traditionally
6
employed in previous studies, which suggests that union influence goes beyond the power of
collective bargaining and group size. In other words, our newly created measure using campaign
contributions appears to represent an alternative dimension of teacher union political power.
[Table 2 about here]
In addition to our main explanatory variable of interest – teacher union political influence
– we also consider and control for a set of other factors that may also explain a state’s propensity
to adopt education reform policies. First, we control for the effectiveness of a state’s public
school system by including a measure of each state’s high school graduation rate for 2005. This
is important because state policymakers have fewer incentives to pursue politically controversial
education reforms when their public school system is already performing at a high level. We
also control for state education spending per pupil (in $1000s) with the expectation that state
policymakers can afford to experiment with and fund new reforms in states that allocate more
resources to elementary and secondary education in their general budget fund. Additionally, we
control for the size of the state’s elementary and secondary school population as measured by the
(logged) size of the state’s public school enrollment (K-12). This measure has become a
standard control variable in education politics and policy research given the expectation that
statehouse politics may differ when the constituency is more heterogeneous and state
policymakers from more densely populated states face pressures to respond to the unique needs
of large urban school districts (Shen and Wong 2006).
To account for political factors that may influence education reform policy, we include
measures of state government ideological liberalism (Berry et al. 1998) for 2006 and state public
opinion towards education reform.2 We expect that more ideologically liberal state legislatures
2
To measure state public opinion on education reform, we pool data from the 2000 and 2004 National Annenberg
Election Surveys (NAES). The NAES surveys a wide range of political attitudes but, unfortunately, ask only one
7
will be less likely to adopt education reforms. On the other hand, we expect states where public
opinion is more favorable to experimentation with education reforms will be more likely to adopt
these reform policies.
Evaluating Teacher Union Influence on State Education Reform Policy
To assess the influence of teacher unions on policy, we gather data on current state
education reform policies regarding the expansion of school choice and reforming teacher pay
and evaluation policies by judging teachers on the basis of student achievement. We measure
school choice in three ways by assessing the degree to which state policies are favorable toward
(1) private school choice (i.e. vouchers and tuition tax credits), (2) public school choice, and (3)
charter schools. We measure teacher evaluation and pay policies using a new data set compiled
by the National Council for Teaching Quality, a non-partisan education research organization
question on education reform in each wave. Both are on the topic of school vouchers. In 2000, they ask: “Give tax
credits or vouchers to help parents send their children to private schools – should the federal government do this or
not?” Response categories: (1) Favor or (2) Oppose. In 2004, they ask: “The federal government giving tax credits
or vouchers to help parents send their children to private schools – do you favor or oppose the federal government
doing this?” Response categories: (1) Strongly favor, (2) Somewhat favor, (3) Somewhat oppose, (4) Strongly
oppose, or (5) Neither favor nor oppose. Pooling these two survey items together yields a total of 124,084
respondents. When disaggregated to the state level, the median state has 2,190 respondents and only three states
have fewer than 400 respondents (Delaware has 396, North Dakota has 384, and Wyoming has 344). To measure
opinion on school vouchers, we take the percentage of respondents in a state who support vouchers and subtract the
percentage of respondents who oppose vouchers. Doing so leaves us with an estimate whereby a positive value
indicates net support for vouchers and a negative indicates net opposition. This measure reveals significant variation
across states, ranging from a low of -.21 to a high of .07 (mean = -.06, SD = .06). Residents of Alaska and Hawaii
were not surveyed in either wave of the NAES, so all models of education reform include the remaining 48 states.
Although voucher attitudes do not directly measure opinion on other education policies, we are reasonably confident
that citizens who support vouchers also tend to support charter schools, merit pay, and greater accountability for
teachers. To test this assumption, we used Phi Delta Kappan’s (PDK) 2001 Annual Survey of the Public's Attitudes
Toward the Public Schools to generate predicted probabilities for the likelihood that a respondent who supported
vouchers also supported several ancillary education reforms. When all standard demographic control variables
(race, income, education, gender, and partisanship) were set at their mean values and opinion on school vouchers
was varied from opposition to support, we observed statistically significant and substantial increases (from 11 to 32
percentage points) in the likelihood that a respondent supported charter schools, high stakes testing, and greater
teacher and principal accountability. We take this as evidence that support for school vouchers indicates the floor
level of a citizen’s support for education policy reforms that the teacher unions oppose.
8
that tracks state laws and regulations relating to states’ teacher policies. Detailed explanations
for how we constructed each of our five measures of education reform policy – vouchers, public
school choice, charter schools, teacher evaluation, and teacher pay – and descriptive statistics for
all variables used in our analysis are available in Appendices A and B, respectively.
For each education policy measure, higher scores represent greater education reform and
consequently policies that are contrary to the preferences of the nation’s two largest teacher
unions – the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association
(NEA). For example, in key policy statements and resolutions adopted or reaffirmed at its 20082009 national convention, the NEA continued to voice its opposition to education reform policies
that differentiate teacher pay, tie teacher evaluation/pay to student performance, and expand
charter and private school choice options.3

On private school choice (Resolution A-25): “The National Education Association believes
that voucher plans, tuition tax credits, or other funding/financial arrangements that use tax
monies to subsidize pre-K through 12 private school education can undermine public
education … and opposes voucher plans, tuition tax credits, or other such funding
arrangements that pay for students to attend sectarian schools” (p. 211-212).

On charter schools (Resolution A-32): “Charter school programs must be qualitatively
different from what is available in mainstream public schools and not just an avenue for
parental choice” (p. 214).

On teacher evaluation reform (Resolution D-20): “The Association also believes that the
use of student achievement measures such as standardized test scores or grades to determine
the competency, quality, or effectiveness of any professional educator is inappropriate and is
3
All statements from the NEA Handbook are available at http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/2009Handbook.pdf.
9
not a valid measure” (p. 275).

On teacher pay reform (Resolution F-9): “The Association opposes providing additional
compensation to attract and/or retain education employees in hard-to-recruit positions … and
further believes that merit pay or any other system of compensation based on an evaluation
of an education employee’s performance are inappropriate” (p. 286).
The first two measures of education policy we assess (vouchers and public school choice) are
ordinal (0, 1, or 2) and are modeled using an ordered probit estimator. The other three measures
are continuous (principal components analysis scores) and are modeled using ordinary least
squares regression.
We begin by assessing the relationship between teacher union political activism using our
newly constructed measure of campaign contributions and the five areas of education reform
policy. The results of this analysis are reported in Table 3. Looking across the five columns, all
of the coefficients for teacher union campaign contributions are negative, and for three
dependent variables – public school choice, teacher evaluation, and teacher pay – the coefficients
are bounded below zero at conventional levels (95%) of statistical significance. Substantively,
moving from one standard deviation below the mean to one standard deviation above for teacher
union campaign contributions leads to over half a standard deviation decrease in the predicted
score for teacher evaluation and teacher pay reforms.4 Even after controlling for other common
predictors of adoption of education reforms, our new measure of the political activism of teacher
4
One concern about these findings is the possibility for endogeneity – that teacher unions are increasing their
campaign contribution efforts in response to state education reform policies, as opposed to influencing the tone of
policy. However, for this to be true given the direction of the signs reported for the coefficients for teacher union
campaign contributions in Table 3, teacher unions in states with more education reform policies would “respond” to
reforms with less political activity (i.e. fewer campaign contributions) compared to teacher unions in other states.
Given their ardent opposition to many school reform policies as documented in the policy statements listed above,
this would be a rather unexpected reaction.
10
unions remains a powerful predictor of policy.
[Table 3 about here]
The control variables we include in the models reported in Table 3 behave generally as
expected. Most notably, public opinion toward education reform is a strong predictor of reform
in two of the models. When the public is more favorable toward education reform policies (as
measured as opinion toward vouchers), state leaders tend to be responsive in the type of
education reform policies they implement. These findings align with recent work that shows
specific state policies tend to be responsive to issue-specific public opinion (Lax and Phillips
2009). We also find, as expected, that more ideologically liberal state legislatures are less likely
to adopt education reform policies that teacher unions oppose.
How does our newly developed measure of teacher union political influence compare to
the other three measures commonly used in the education politics literature? In Table 4, we use
the same set of controls as the models presented in Table 3, but instead use three alternative
measures of teacher union political influence: the favorability of a state’s collective bargaining
laws covering public school teachers, NEA member density, and public sector union member
density. Unlike the results we present in Table 3, we find that these three alternative measures of
teacher union political influence are not predictors of the tone of state education reform policy.
For two of the measures – collective bargaining strength and NEA member density – none of the
coefficients for teacher union influence are statistically distinguishable from zero. For the other
measure – public sector union member density – only the coefficient for teacher pay policy is
both in the expected direction (negative) and statistically significant.
[Table 4 about here]
11
Conclusion
By using a measure that better captures teacher union activism in state politics, as
opposed to internal union organizational power, we have demonstrated that teacher unions are in
fact influential players in state education reform debates and are ultimately effective in warding
off the changes they oppose. This is an important finding because previous studies that have
used the alternative measures we present in Table 4 may have underestimated the actual
influence that teacher unions exert on state education policies. Moreover, the data suggest that in
many southern right-to-work states where public sector collective bargaining laws are weak or
nonexistent, teacher unions are able to gain leverage in the policymaking process by ratcheting
up their group’s political activism in the form of campaign contributions to candidates for state
office. Given the recent flurry of state policymaking activity aimed at reforming teacher pay and
evaluation standards5, this research provides important context on the way in which the political
process influences and shapes those reform efforts.
More broadly, these findings also suggest that future studies of interest group influence
may benefit by incorporating alternative measures of organizational power to uncover influence
over policymaking. This could be particularly useful when trying to disentangle the effects of a
diverse array of interest groups, some of which receive direct subsidy-like benefits to enhance its
organization from the government itself. In short, future studies should pay special attention to
how the political influence of organized interested is measured and operationalized.
5
According to analyses commissioned by the National Governors Association (NGA), at least half of the nation’s
governors proposed generic teacher quality reforms in their state-of-the-state address (since 2005) and at least a
quarter specifically proposed performance pay reform for teachers. The latest NGA State of the State Analysis
(2009) is available at: http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/GOVSPEAK0904.pdf. For a full archive of NGA analyses
since 2005, visit: www.nga.org.
12
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Table 1: Percentage of Total Campaign Contributions to Candidates for
State Office from Teacher Unions (1998-2006)
State
Oregon
Indiana
Nebraska
Illinois
Wyoming
Alabama
Utah
Nevada
North Dakota
Idaho
West Virginia
Rhode Island
Kentucky
Pennsylvania
Colorado
Michigan
South Dakota
New Jersey
Tennessee
California
Kansas
Connecticut
Ohio
Hawaii
Wisconsin
Percent
3.69
3.37
3.29
3.23
3.18
3.15
2.96
2.87
2.74
1.95
1.74
1.69
1.60
1.54
1.21
1.17
1.17
1.16
1.07
1.06
1.06
1.05
1.04
1.03
1.00
State
Iowa
Montana
Texas
Washington
New York
Florida
Minnesota
New Mexico
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Georgia
North Carolina
Louisiana
Maryland
Missouri
Delaware
Virginia
Arizona
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Alaska
South Carolina
Maine
Mississippi
Vermont
Percent
0.92
0.71
0.61
0.58
0.57
0.55
0.53
0.48
0.47
0.40
0.37
0.37
0.36
0.34
0.31
0.29
0.28
0.25
0.22
0.22
0.18
0.18
0.17
0.17
0.05
Data source: National Institute on Money in State Politics (www.followthemoney.org).
17
Table 2: Different Measures of Teacher Union Political Power
Collective
Bargaining
Strength
NEA
Member
Density
Public
Sector Union
Density
Collective
Bargaining
Strength
1.000
NEA Member
Density
.481*
1.000
Public Sector
Union Density
.628*
.540*
1.000
Teacher Union
Campaign
Contributions
.046
.190
.035
N = 50.
Cell entries are pair-wise correlation coefficients.
* denotes p<.05.
18
Teacher Union
Campaign
Contributions
1.000
Table 3: Teacher Union Campaign Contributions and State Education Reform Policies
(1)
Vouchers
(2)
Public School
Choice
(3)
Charter
Schools
(4)
Teacher
Evaluation
(5)
Teacher Pay
Teacher
Union Campaign
Contributions
-0.330
[0.279]
-0.336*
[0.179]
-0.132
[0.179]
-0.454*
[0.234]
-0.442*
[0.224]
Graduation
Rate
0.035
[0.035]
0.017
[0.025]
0.004
[0.026]
-0.087*
[0.034]
-0.065*
[0.033]
Per-Pupil
Spending
($1000s)
-0.347
[0.231]
-0.148
[0.122]
0.049
[0.121]
0.021
[0.158]
-0.049
[0.152]
Student
Enrollment
(logged)
-0.063
[0.299]
-0.132
[0.201]
0.379*
[0.218]
0.300
[0.284]
0.300
[0.272]
Government
Ideological
Liberalism
-0.012
[0.012]
-0.013*
[0.008]
-0.010
[0.008]
-0.004
[0.011]
-0.029*
[0.010]
Public Support
for Education
Reform
13.275*
[5.729]
2.782
[3.405]
9.524*
[3.550]
0.651
[4.633]
0.991
[4.429]
Constant
--
--
-4.311
[3.657]
2.853
[4.772]
2.941
[4.562]
Cut Point #1
-0.869
[4.669]
-3.129
[3.380]
--
--
--
Cut Point #2
0.051
[4.662]
-2.282
[3.371]
--
--
--
Pseudo R²
R²
N
.19
-48
.08
-48
-.39
48
-.33
48
-.43
48
Dependent variable (education reform policy) listed above each column.
Cell entries are ordered probit (Columns 1-2) and OLS regression coefficients (Columns 3-5),
standard errors reported underneath in brackets.
* denotes p<.05. One-tailed test.
19
Table 4: Alternative Measures of Teacher Union Political Influence
(1)
Vouchers
(2)
Public
School
Choice
(3)
(4)
(5)
Charter
Schools
Teacher
Evaluation
Teacher Pay
(A)
Collective
Bargaining
Strength
0.086
[0.135]
-0.010
[0.096]
0.032
[0.102]
-0.007
[0.138]
-0.054
[0.132]
Pseudo R²
R²
.17
--
.05
--
-.38
-.27
-.37
NEA Member
Density
0.015
[0.059]
-0.049
[0.045]
-0.060
[0.046]
-0.003
[0.063]
-0.066
[0.060]
Pseudo R²
R²
.17
--
.06
--
-.41
-.27
-.39
Public Sector
Union Density
0.006
[0.018]
0.001
[0.013]
0.011
[0.014]
-0.027
[0.018]
-0.037*
[0.017]
Pseudo R²
R²
.17
--
.05
--
-.39
-.31
-.44
(B)
(C)
N = 48 for all models.
Dependent variable (education reform policy) listed above each column.
Cell entries are ordered probit (Columns 1-2) and OLS regression coefficients (Columns 3-5),
standard errors reported underneath in brackets.
All models control for Graduation Rate, Per-Pupil Spending ($1000s), Student Enrollment
(logged), Government Ideological Liberalism, and Public Support for Education Reform.
* denotes p<.05. One-tailed test.
20
Appendix A: Data Sources
Dependent
Variable
Vouchers
Public School
Choice
Measurement
Source
Additive 0-2 index comprised of two separate private school choice policies. States with a private
school voucher program in place were coded 1. States with a tuition tax credit for deducting the cost
of private school education were coded 1. All others coded 0.
National Alliance for
School Choice (2009)
Additive 0-2 index comprised of two separate public school choice policies. States that require school
districts to offer mandatory inter-district public school choice coded 2, mandatory intra-district choice
a 1, while all others were coded 0.
Education Commission
of the States (2009)
Principal components analysis of 4 separate state-level policies governing charter schools:
Charter
Schools
1. State has a charter school law in place
2. State allows multiple authorizing agencies to establish new charter schools
3. State does not place a cap on the number of new charters that may be authorized
4. State provides equal funding to charter facilities
National Alliance for
Public Charter Schools
Dashboard (2009)
Cronbach’s Alpha: .67
Principal components analysis of 5 separate state-level policies governing teacher evaluation.
NCTQ’s database asked whether state policy allows the following for teacher evaluation systems:
Teacher
Evaluation
1. Use of standardized achievement tests as a component of tenured teachers’ evaluations
2. Use of standardized achievement tests as a component of non-tenured teachers’ evaluations
3. Required use of a statewide teacher evaluation instrument
4. Consideration of student performance (however defined) in the evaluation of a tenured teacher
5. Consideration of student performance (however defined) in the evaluation of a non-tenured teacher
National Council on
Teacher Quality TR3
Database (2009)
Cronbach’s Alpha: .85
Principal components analysis of 7 separate state-level policies governing teacher pay.
Teacher Pay
NCTQ’s database asked whether state policy allows the following for teacher pay systems:
21
National Council on
Teacher Quality TR3
Database (2009)
1. Additional pay for teaching certain subjects
2. Additional pay for high performance
3. Additional pay for teaching in a “high-needs” school
4. Credit on the salary schedule for private school teaching experience
5. Credit on the salary schedule for postsecondary teaching experience
6. Credit on the salary schedule for private sector non-teaching experience
7. Defining teacher performance as improved student achievement
Cronbach’s Alpha: .81
Explanatory Variable
Measurement
Teacher Union
Campaign Contributions
Overall percentage of political contributions made to candidates for state office by state teacher
union associations, 1998-2006 (average for years when state legislators are up for election)
Collective
Bargaining Strength
Freeman and Valletta (1988) use a 0-6 scale to measure state collective bargaining rights for
public school teachers with higher numbers representing broader collective bargaining. The
primary areas included in their measurement are: contract negotiation, union recognition, union
security, impasse procedures, and strike policy (Shen and Wong 2006).
NEA Member Density
NEA members per 1000 state residents (2000-2006 averaged)
Source
Authors’ own data set
created using the National
Institute on Money in
State Politics, available at
www.followthemoney.org
Public Sector Collective
Bargaining Law Data Set,
created by Valletta and
Freeman (1988)
NEA Membership
Handbook (selected
editions); Manna and
Tydgat (2008)
Hirsch and Macpherson,
(2003)
Education Week, 2008
National Center on
Education Statistics
(2006)
National Center on
Education Statistics
(2006)
Graduation Rate
Density of union membership within a state’s total public sector workforce (2000-2006
averaged)
State’s high school graduation rate for the class/cohort of 2005
Per-Pupil Spending ($1000s)
State per-pupil spending on elementary and secondary education (in $1000s)
Student Enrollment (logged)
Logged value of state’s public elementary and secondary student enrollment
Government Ideological
Liberalism
Annual measure of state government ideology (liberalism) for 2006
Berry et al. (1998)
Public Support for
Education Reform
Percentage of a state’s residents who when surveyed favored private school vouchers minus
percentage of residents who opposed vouchers
2000 and 2004 National
Annenberg Election
Surveys
Public Sector Union Density
22
Appendix B: Descriptive Statistics
Mean
Standard Deviation
Min
Max
Dependent Policy Variables
Vouchers
.26
.56
0
2
Public School Choice
1.06
.84
0
2
Charter Schools
0
1.44
-2.39
2.02
Teacher Evaluation
0
1.80
-1.45
3.13
Teacher Pay
0
1.85
-1.49
4.88
Explanatory Variables
Teacher Union Campaign Contributions
1.17
1.05
.05
3.69
Collective Bargaining Strength
3.98
1.92
0
6
NEA Member Density
10.99
5.17
1.86
22.59
Public Sector Union Density
33.11
17.35
9.06
69.43
Graduation Rate
70.42
7.61
52.57
83.33
Per-Pupil Spending ($1000s)
5.67
2.22
2.54
14.64
Student Enrollment (logged)
13.29
1.04
11.35
15.67
Government Ideological Liberalism
49.29
26.29
9.49
94.77
-.06
.06
-.21
.07
Public Support for Education Reform
23