Collective bargaining and school district test scores: evidence from Ohio bargaining agreements

ABSTRACT

We revisit the relationship between collective bargaining by teachers unions and school performance. The empirical literature in this area has found mixed results at both the state and district levels. We contribute to this literature in two ways. First, rather than simply dummy union status, we proxy for the restrictiveness of collective bargaining agreements with the number of pages per agreement. Second, we employ Bayesian spatial methods to deal with spatial dependence in school district activities. Our reduced-form results indicate that collective bargaining directly lowers scores on high school math scores, but that the total effect is zero.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective bargaining
• teachers unions
• education production function

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J50
• H1
• I21

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the Center for Free Enterprise within the College of Business at West Virginia University for general research support, such as journal submission fees and travel funding.