While teacher strikes often get the most attention because of the impact on students, they can also have significant broader political and economic effects. A new working paper by an accomplished team of researchers explores these and other aspects of the strike phenomenon, using a unique data set that includes every major public school teachers’ work stoppage since 2012.
The study reveals that, for instance, the districts in which teachers are most likely to go on strike tend to have lower per-student spending than the national average, worse student-teacher ratios, and higher proportions of minority students. That might not be a coincidence; in fact, it suggests that teaching unions target schools they see as needing the most help.
As for the impact on students, the authors find that the short strikes have minimal academic consequences, while longer ones may have small negative effects in math. Moreover, they note that the overall effect is likely to fade as education reforms take hold and the teacher workforce becomes more diverse.
In 37 states and the District of Columbia, it’s illegal for teachers to strike, and the penalties for doing so can include fines and even termination or license suspension. The authors also point out that when a union fails to prevent an unauthorized job action, such as a one-day sickout, it can lose its dues-deduction privileges in the school involved. That’s what happened in the Buffalo school district, where a group of teachers who went on a day-long sickout lost their dues deductions for two days.