The Myth of Unions’ Overprotection of Bad Teachers: Evidence from the District–Teacher Matched Data on Teacher Turnover

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12256
• Author: Eunice S. Han
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Date: 01 April 2020

The Myth of Unions’Overprotection of Bad

Teachers: Evidence from the District–Teacher

Matched Data on Teacher Turnover

EUNICE S. HAN

This article examines the relationship between teachers’unions and teacher turn-

over in U.S. public schools. The trade-off between teacher pay and employment

predicts that unions raise the dismissal rate of underperforming teachers but

reduce the attrition of high-quality teachers, as the higher wages unions negotiate

provide districts strong incentives to scrutinize teacher performance during a pro-

bationary period while encouraging high-quality teachers to remain in teaching.

Using the district–teacher matched data and a natural experiment, I find that, com-

pared to less-unionized districts, highly unionized districts dismiss more low-qual-

ity teachers and retain more high-quality teachers, raising average teacher quality

and educational outcomes.

Recent studies suggest that teachers are the most important

school factor in improving the educational achievement of U.S. students

(Burke and Sass 2006; Goldhaber, Brewer, and Anderson 1999; Ingersoll and

Merrill 2017; Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005). Yet, researchers find that the

quality of the teaching workforce in the United States has been declining for

the past several decades (Bacolod 2003; Corcoran, Evans, and Schwab 2004;

Hoxby and Leigh 2004; Lakdawalla 2001; Murnane et al. 1991). Raising tea-

cher quality, therefore, becomes a primary objective for policymakers in edu-

cational reforms. Staffing classrooms with high-quality teachers can be

achieved by both hiring and retaining good teachers, and teacher turnover is a

key factor linking both approaches.

JEL codes: I21, J51, J63.

*The author’saffiliation is University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT. E-mail: eunice.han@economics.utah.edu

or hane@nber.org. The author thanks Elaine Bernard, Brendan Duke, Henry Farber, Richard Freeman, Barry

Hirsch, Jeff Keefe, David Madland, Jerry Marschke, Kyung Park, Hye Young You, seminar participants at

the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Labor Studies Program, and faculty at Wellesley Col-

lege and University of Utah for their helpful comments. The author also thanks the NBER for providing

necessary facilities and assistance and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for kindly provid-

ing the data. The views expressed herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of

the NBER or the NCES.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, DOI: 10.1111/irel.12256. Vol. 59, No. 2 (April 2020). ©2020 Regents of the

Universit y of Calif ornia . Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148,

USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK.

316

The goal of this article is to examine how teachers’unions affect teacher

turnover and ultimately influence teacher quality and education outcomes. This

study examines two main types of teacher turnover: voluntary and involuntary

job termination. The former depends on teachers’decisions whereas the latter

reflects school districts’assessments. Each type of turnover has a distinctive

effect on the educational system, as teachers’objectives may differ from dis-

tricts’goals. Therefore, a clear understanding of the dynamics of each turnover

is critical for addressing school staffing problems and raising teacher quality.

Involuntary job termination includes dismissal, layoff, and mandatory retire-

ment. This study focuses on “teacher dismissal”in which school districts fire

less effective teachers based on their performance. Most states have a proba-

tionary period of 1 to 5 years preceding tenure, and districts have the right to

fire probationary teachers who do not meet their performance standards. States’

statutes also specify a variety of causes for involuntary job termination of

tenured teachers, including incompetence in teaching.

1

According to the Tea-

cher Follow-up Survey for 2012–2013, only about 10 percent of former teach-

ers were let go due to poor performance. Dismissal of poor-performing

teachers, however, concerns teachers at the bottom of the productivity distribu-

tion, affecting average teacher quality.

Critics of unions claim that teachers’unions overprotect the job security of

ineffective teachers, which is detrimental to public education (Moe 2011). At

first, this claim appears legitimate because a typical workers’association will

try to secure the employment of its members. However, the higher pay unions

bargain for members is often blamed for causing higher unemployment in the

local labor markets, so it is doubtful that teachers’unions can ensure both

higher pay and job security. Furthermore, the job security of public school

teachers is addressed through the tenure system, and tenured teachers are not

easily dismissed regardless of their union status.

The economic intuition that is overlooked in discussions on teacher dis-

missal is that employers respond to unions’requests on terms of employment,

which can lead to different sorting of workers based on their skills (Card

1996; Hirsch and Schumacher 1998; Sojourner et al. 2015). Districts have a

strong motivation to dismiss low-quality teachers if they must pay the higher

1

For instance, under current California state law, tenured teachers may be dismissed for dishonesty,

unprofessional conduct, or unsatisfactory performance. Tenured teachers must be evaluated at least once

every 2 years. If they receive an unsatisfactory evaluation, they must be assessed annually until they achieve

a satisfactory evaluation or are dismissed. The dismissal process begins with a school district specifying rea-

sons for dismissal and providing a 30-day notice of its intent to dismiss. If requested by the teachers, the

process includes a formal administrative hearing and the right to appeal to a court. Before dismissing for

unsatisfactory performance, the school district must first provide employees a 90-day period to allow them

an opportunity to improve their performance.

The Myth of Unions’Overprotection of Bad Teachers / 317

salaries that unions demand. During the probationary period, districts will care-

fully evaluate new teachers’performance, as they need to pay even higher

wages once these teachers receive tenure. Moreover, if there exist decreasing

returns to investment on a given teacher (i.e., teachers become costlier through

their careers but their productivities do not rise accordingly), districts will be

more inclined to dismiss these poor-performing teachers before their job termi-

nation becomes more difficult post-tenure. If districts’response to this eco-

nomic trade-off between teacher compensation and employment is strong,

unions may not be able to ensure both higher pay and secured employment.

Therefore, it is essential to clarify whether union teachers can secure their jobs

better than nonunion teachers. This study makes the first attempt to rigorously

test this assertion and to shed light on the relationship between teachers’

unions and teacher dismissal in public schools that has been largely ignored in

literature.

For the discussion about the union effects on voluntary job termination, this

study focuses on “teacher attrition,”in which teachers completely leave the

teaching profession for nonretirement reasons. By raising teacher compensation

and improving working conditions, teachers’unions may help districts retain

teachers who otherwise may find better alternatives outside of teaching and

leave their classrooms.

Literature Review

Teachers’unions and teacher dismissal. Teachers’unions may indirectly

affect teacher dismissal via teacher compensation. When unions negotiate for

higher teacher pay, this may provide incentive to districts to scrutinize and

carefully evaluate teacher performance during a probationary period and be

more selective in granting tenure to teachers.

Numerous studies have examined the effect of teachers’unions on teacher

salaries to find that collective bargaining raises pay by 8 to 15 percent (Han

2019; Hirsch, Macpherson, and Winters 2011; Hoxby 1996; Lemke 2004), and

that union teachers earn the wage premium of 10 to 12 percent (Baugh and

Stone 1982; Belman, Heywood, and Lund 1997; Freeman and Valletta 1988;

Moore and Raisian 1987). A recent study by Brunner and Ju (2019) showed

that mandatory collective bargaining laws increase public-sector wages by 5 to

8 percentage points. Moreover, Author (2015) demonstrated that, in the

absence of collective bargaining, unions can still bring significant salary gains

through other channels such as higher union density, although wage gains are

smaller without bargaining contracts.

318 / EUNICE S. HAN