The Causes and Consequences of U.S. Teacher Strikes, 2007-2022

• In Event: Interest Groups, Voting, and Participation in School District Politics

Abstract

Who wins when teachers strike? Despite a recent surge in teacher strikes, we know very little about their prevalence or their effects on students. In theory, strikes might benefit teachers at the expense of students who lose valuable instructional time. Empirical work on this issue in Argentina, Belgium, and Canada has shown that very long strikes lead to negative short and long-term consequences for students (Baker, 2013; Belot & Webbink, 2010; Jaume & Willén, 2019; Johnson, 2011). However, strikes in the United States occur in a very different context for education decision making.

Little is known about the effects of teacher strikes in the United States. Existing studies focus on a small set of high intensity strikes that shut down schools in large urban areas or entire states. Hertel-Fernandez, Naidu, and Reich (2020), for example, show that exposure to 2018 “#RedforEd” teacher strikes shaped public perceptions of labor positively, inspiring non-unionized individuals to become interested in future labor action. Strikes accomplished this by providing new information to parents and garnering the attention of the media (Hertel-Fernandez, 2019). US strikes, which tend to be much shorter than the strikes examined in prior literature, could also generate improved conditions for both teaching and learning that outweigh the costs of the strike, yet no empirical work has examined the effects of teacher strikes in the United States.

In this study, we systematically document 747 teacher strikes that occurred nationally between the 2007-08 to 2021-22 academic years. Of those, 201 were individual strikes occurring within a given school district, and the other 546 were coordinated strikes across districts within a given state. Coordinated strikes have become increasingly common, first in Washington state in 2015 and then in states like Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia with the 2018 and 2019 “#RedforEd” strikes.

We find notable differences between causes (stated reasons and predictors) of individual and coordinated strikes, with individual strikes more focused on salaries and benefits, and coordinated strikes more focused on overall per pupil expenditures and broader social issues. Individual strikes also tended to take place in districts with higher per pupil expenditures than average, whereas coordinated strikes took place in areas with notably lower expenditures. This is particularly true for instructional expenditures, which are most strongly related to student achievement (Jackson, Johnson, & Persico, 2016).

We examine the effects of individual strikes for student achievement and school spending using an event study approach that leverages the variation in strikes across school districts and over time. Preliminary findings suggest that teacher strikes lead to an immediate but slight decline in student achievement in the year of the strike, but then a small and sustained increase in student achievement. Results are initially driven by increases in instructional salary and benefit expenditures, but then replaced with increasing class sizes.

This research contributes new knowledge about the consequences of teacher strikes for students at a critical moment when teacher activism has been on the rise. We provide the first comprehensive survey of teacher strikes nationally over the preceding decade along with causal estimates of the impacts of teacher strikes on student achievement. This research also informs ongoing public debates around the consequences of teacher strikes for student outcomes and educational policy.

Authors

• Melissa A. Lyon, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York

• Matthew Kraft