Teachers, Unions, and Collective Bargaining in Public Education addresses the most important aspects of the collective bargaining system.

Founded in 1921 as a separate Wharton department, the Industrial Research Unit has a long record of publication and research in the labor market, productivity, union relations, and business report fields. Major Industrial Research Unit studies as published as research projects are completed. This volume is Study no. 42.

This timely and comprehensive volume will spur and strengthen public debate over the role of teachers unions in education reform for years to come. Collective bargaining shapes the way public schools are organized, financed, staffed, and operated. Understanding collective bargaining in education and its impact on the day-to-day life of schools is critical to designing and implementing reforms that will successfully raise student achievement. But when it comes to public discussion of school reform, teachers unions are the proverbial elephant in the room. Despite the tremendous influence of teachers unions, there has not been a significant research-based book examining the role of collective bargaining in education in more than two decades. As a result, there is little basis for a constructive, empirically grounded dialogue about the role of teachers unions in education today.

Unionization of teachers has led to fundamental changes in the management of education and in relations between teachers and school districts. Understanding the Teacher Union Contract explores the implications of this collective-bargaining revolution in education. Through detailed examination Lieberman shows how the kinds of provisions typically found in teacher union contracts affect the educational workplace and education reform, and how they might be revised to the benefit of students, parents, and the public. Lieberman begins with the respective roles of school district management and teacher unions. Unlike managers in the private sector, school district officials are part of a government agency that is legally responsible for operating public schools in the public interest. They must balance the interests of employees with the needs of students, taxpayers, and parents, as well as with district educational goals. Teacher unions' primary objectives are to enhance employee welfare and to promote the union as an effective organization. Unions must balance the differing needs of various groups within their membership -- for example, by resolving tensions between older teachers who want improved retirement benefits and younger teachers who might prefer more rapid salary increases. Lieberman shows how competing union and management goals play out in collective bargaining and are embodied in teacher union contracts. He argues that by developing an understanding of teacher unions, their role, and their needs, district officials and school board members can bargain more effectively and develop a productive ongoing relationship with unions. This highly readable book will be of interestnot only to school administrators and board members but also to teacher representatives, parents, taxpayers, and members of the media who report on education.

Why are America's public schools falling so short of the mark in educating the nation's children? Why are they organized in ineffective ways that fly in the face of common sense, to the point that it is virtually impossible to get even the worst teachers out of the classroom? And why, after more than a quarter century of costly education reform, have the schools proven so resistant to change and so difficult to improve? In this path-breaking book, Terry M. Moe demonstrates that the answers to these questions have a great deal to do with teachers unions—which are by far the most powerful forces in American education and use their power to promote their own special interests at the expense of what is best for kids. Despite their importance, the teachers unions have barely been studied. Special Interest fills that gap with an extraordinary analysis that is at once brilliant and kaleidoscopic—shedding new light on their historical rise to power, the organizational foundations of that power, the ways it is exercised in collective bargaining and politics, and its vast consequences for American education. The bottom line is simple but devastating: as long as the teachers unions remain powerful, the nation's schools will never be organized to provide kids with the most effective education possible. Moe sees light at the end of the tunnel, however, due to two major transformations. One is political, the other technological, and the combination is destined to weaken the unions considerably in the coming years—loosening their special-interest grip and opening up a new era in which America's schools can finally be organized in the best interests of children.

Everyone wants to reform public education in America. But few realize that the principal obstruction to all reform is a pair of powerful and well-entrenched organizations: the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Examination of the effects of collective bargaining of public education teachers in the USA - covers trade unionization, working conditions and wages, esp. Wage differentials with nonunionized workers, labour disputes, the effect on teaching standards and student performance, labour contracts, resource allocation. Bibliography, graphs and statistical tables.

Collective bargaining in the public schools of the nation has its legal roots in the industrial labor model fashioned in the 1930s out of labor strife between union organizers and private businesses. This industrial union labor model was transplanted almost wholesale into the public sector over fifty years ago when teachers, fire and police personnel were granted the legislative right to collectively bargain their wages, benefits, and terms and conditions of employment in most states. What impact has this industrial model had on public education and on the relationship between teachers and administrators? Labor Relations in Education explores unions and collective bargaining in the public schools of America. The history of the laws, the politics of the response to collective bargaining and unions, and the practices of bargaining and managing a contract are explored in this volume. Changes that may move labor relations into professional relations and away from the industrial labor union model and diminish the schism that exists between educators are discussed. A fully developed simulation is included to employ the practices and concepts discussed in the book.

A former US Secretary of Education addresses the crisis in public schooling and the role teachers’ unions have played in its decline. Something is terribly wrong with America’s public-school system. For decades, we have seen test scores slide or stagnate—today, fewer than twenty percent of our nation’s twelfth graders are proficient in math, and our students rank near the bottom in science and math among the industrialized nations of the world—and achievement gaps persist or widen. So who’s responsible for the ongoing failure of our education system? In The War Against Hope, former Secretary of Education Rod Paige pulls no punches in his critical analysis of America’s crisis in the classroom. Without question, the greatest impediment to meaningful school reform is the enormous, self-aggrandizing power wielded by the teachers’ unions. In this vital, well-documented book, Paige takes an unflinching look at the power-hungry union leaders who have consistently placed their ambitions ahead of the needs of the teachers and the students whom they claim to serve. He also traces the history of the National Education Association (NEA) from its humble beginnings as an advocate of education excellence to its early radicalization by left-wing ideology. The War Against Hope is a disturbing account of the corruption, greed, and skewed values that have assaulted our schools, betrayed our teachers, and forsaken our children for far too long.

An anthology of more than 60 articles documenting the history and the how-tos of social justice unionism. Together, they describe the growing movement to forge multiracial alliances with communities to defend and transform public education.