Changing Collective Bargaining Agreements in California Public Schools: Why do Districts Implement Restrictive Contracts, and How do They Impact Student Achievement?

Katharine O. Strunk

Recent media and policy attention regarding public education has focused to a great extent on teachers’ unions and the collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) they negotiate with district administrations. Among other things, teachers’ unions have been accused of using their right to negotiate contracts to block educational reforms and harm student achievement. Although research confirms that many CBAs may indeed constrain district administrators from implementing some reforms, there is no empirical evidence to support the argument that restrictive contracts cause decreases in student achievement. Moreover, there is little recent empirical research that explores why unions and district administrations negotiate such contracts. Research that explores these relationships has been limited due to the reliance on a single year of data from CBAs. Using a unique self-collected dataset of California school district contracts, this study will be the first to utilize data garnered from contracts over time to provide empirical evidence that addresses questions regarding the relationships between contract restrictiveness, district characteristics, and student achievement. Specifically, I ask: (1) Are CBAs growing more or less restrictive over time?; (2) What district characteristics are associated with the implementation of more or less restrictive contracts and specific provisions?; and (3) What is the relationship between the changes in CBA restrictiveness or provisions and student achievement? This line of questioning will not only enable a greater understanding of CBAs and the relationships between changes in CBAs and important district characteristics and outcomes, but also will begin to unpack the directionality of the relationship between district characteristics and contract restrictiveness.

About Katharine O. Strunk

Katharine O. Strunk is an Assistant Professor of Education and Policy at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, with a courtesy appointment in the School of Policy, Planning and Development. She is also a faculty research affiliate of both the Center for Education Governance (CEG) and Policy Analysis for Education (PACE), and serves on the board of the Association for Education Finance and Policy. Katharine’s work falls into two overarching categories related to K-12 education policy and reform: teacher labor markets and education governance. Specifically, her work on teacher labor markets focuses on questions concerning the determinants of teacher attrition, the retention and recruitment of high quality teachers, and the impact of teachers' unions and their collective bargaining agreements on district- and school-level processes. Katharine’s research on education governance explores the relationship between teachers' unions and school boards, the implementation and effects of district-level governance reforms, and the varied impacts of accountability policies and their associated interventions. Currently she is a co-Principal Investigator on two large-scale studies of education reform. Katharine's work is published or forthcoming in the Journal of Education Finance and Policy, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, the American Education Research Journal, Educational Policy, the Peabody Journal of Education, the Journal of Education Finance, the National Tax Journal, and the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. Katharine received her PhD in Administration and Policy Analysis and her MA in Economics from Stanford University and her BA in Public Policy from Princeton University.