Teachers’ unions and school performance: Evidence from California charter schools

• Published in: Economics of education review Vol. 61; pp. 35 - 50
• Main Authors: Matsudaira, Jordan D., Patterson, Richard W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2017
• ISSN: 0272-7757; 1873-7382
• DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.09.005

•Estimates the impact of teacher unionization on student achievement in California charter schools between 2003 and 2013.•We compare changes in student achievement in schools that unionize to those that do not using difference-in-differences and event study models.•We find a positive impact of unionization on math achievement of about .17 standard deviations.•Point estimates on English achievement are positive but smaller at .06 standard deviations, and not statistically significant. We examine the impact of unions on the quality of educational production by studying a wave of unionization among California charter schools and administrative data on student achievement. We first present new data showing that unions are much more prevalent among charter schools than suggested by previous studies. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we find that unionization increases achievement in mathematics and has no statistically significant impact on English test scores.