Rent-Seeking, Teacher Voice, and Progressive Coalition-Building: The Effects of Restrictive State Labor Policies

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Politics, Public Participation, and the Varying Goals of Public Education

Abstract

The Janus v. AFCSME (2018) decision has fundamentally changed the institutional context for US teachers’ unions, the most powerful players in education politics, but little is known about the consequences of this change. I present three theories that emerge from the literature on unionization: Rent Seeking, Teacher Voice, and Progressive Coalition Building. I test these theories by exploiting the different timing across states in the passage of recent labor laws in a differences-in-differences framework using a new, longitudinal data set with numerous historical measures going back to the 1940s. I find that restrictive labor laws decrease indicators of teachers’ job interests, lower general state redistribution of resources to middle and working class people, and ultimately decrease student achievement.

Author

• Melissa A Lyon, Brown University