Are teachers' union contracts really to blame? A collection of papers examining collective bargaining agreement constraints on California school districts' capacity.

摘要

This dissertation examines the content and level of restrictiveness or flexibility inherent in California teachers' union collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), and how these contracts are associated with districts' distribution of resources and student outcomes. Teachers' unions and their contracts are perhaps the least studied and one of the most important of the many constraints facing school district administrators. They bargain with school boards over a range of items that affect pecuniary and non-pecuniary conditions. The resulting contracts greatly shape how schools and districts educate their students.;This study first explores the individual regulations contained in California CBAs and determines how the districts with contracts that include these regulations vary by district level, size, poverty level, student racial and ethnic student composition, and geographic location. I find that there is substantial flexibility embedded within teachers' union contracts, however, the most restrictive regulations to the districts are found in urban and large districts and those with higher proportions of black and Hispanic students and students in poverty.;I next use a partial independence item response approach to measure the restrictiveness of California school districts' teachers' collectively-bargained agreements (CBAs). I generate contract-specific measure of inherent contract restrictiveness towards school districts. This paper is the first to apply item response models to an examination of institutional documents.;I join this measure of contract restrictiveness with California school finance and student outcomes data to examine how these contracts constrain school district administrators' actions and how this restrictiveness affects both the distribution of resources within California school districts. I then examine how union restrictiveness is related to student outcomes. I find that districts with more restrictive union contacts spend proportionally more on salaries, retiree benefits and instructional expenditures, but less on books and supplies, pupil services and discretionary funds to be used by the district superintendent and board of education. Although I do not find evidence of a significant relationship between overall contract restrictiveness and student performance on the California Academic Performance Index (API), I do find that more restrictive school calendar, class size and grievance provisions are associated with decreases in API scores.