Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lyon, Melissa Arnold

Titel

Heroes, villains, or something in between? How “Right to Work” policies affect teachers, students, and education policymaking

Ist Teil von

• Economics of education review, 2021-06, Vol.82, p.102105, Article 102105

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •I use a differences-in-differences approach to estimate the impact of Right to Work policies on students, teachers, and education policymaking between 1990 and 2018.•I find that Right to Work policies led to large declines in teachers’ union membership.•If the Janus decision has a relative effect of similar magnitude to prior RTW policies, then it will reduce teacher union membership by over 800,000 members.•Right to Work policies did not result in political opportunities for education reforms nor did they result in increases in student outcomes.•I argue that it is likely that teachers’ unions sometimes narrowly defend the interests of teachers and at other times act as productive information sharers. Although the Janus v. AFCSME (2018) decision fundamentally changed the institutional context for U.S. teachers’ unions by placing all public school teachers in a “Right to Work” (RTW) framework, little research exists to conceptualize the effects of such policies that hinder unionization. To fill this gap, I exploit the different timing across states in the passage of RTW policies in a differences-in-differences framework to identify how exposure to a RTW policy affects students, teachers, and education policymaking. I find that RTW policies lead to declines in teachers’ union power, but contrary to what many union critics have argued, I find that efforts to weaken unions did not result in political opportunities for education reforms nor did they improve student achievement outcomes.