In this article, we rationalize the relevance of the special issue’s theme for the 2018 Politics of Education Association’s special issue of Educational Policy—the politics of unions and collective bargaining in education. Furthermore, we provide an overview of the structure of the special issue and brief summaries of the articles accepted for publication therein. We conclude with a discussion of the broad implications of these articles for education policy.
BallouD. (2000b). Contractual constraints on school management: Principals’ perspectives on teacher contracts. In RavitchD.ViterittiJ. (Eds.), City schools: Lessons from New York (pp. 89-116). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
2.
BallouD. (2000a). Teacher contracts in Massachusetts. Boston, MA: Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Analysis.
3.
BastianK. C.HenryG. T.ThompsonC. L. (2013). Incorporating access to more effective teachers into assessments of educational resource equity. Education Finance and Policy, 8, 560-580.
4.
BettsJ. R.RuebenK. S.DanenbergA. (2000). Equal resources, equal outcomes? The distribution of school resources and student achievement in California. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California.
5.
BivensJ. (2011). Failure by design: The story behind America’s broken economy. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.
6.
Cohen-VogelL.FengL.Osborne-LampkinL. (2013). Seniority provisions in collective bargaining agreements and the “teacher quality gap.”Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 35, 324-343.
7.
Cohen-VogelL.Osborne-LampkinL. (2007). Allocating quality: Collective bargaining agreements and administrative discretion over teacher assignment. Educational Administration Quarterly, 43, 433-461.
8.
Cohen-VogelL.Osborne-LampkinL.HouckE. (2013). New data, old patterns: The role of test scores in student assignment. In AnagnostopoulosD.RutledgeS. A.JacobsenR. (Eds.), The infrastructure of accountability: Mapping data use and its consequences (pp. 141-161). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
9.
CowenJ. M.FowlesJ. (2013). Same contract, different day? An analysis of teacher bargaining agreements in Louisville, since 1979. Teachers College Records, 113(5), 1-30.
10.
GoldhaberD.TheobaldR. (2013). Managing the teacher workforce in austere times: The determinants of teacher layoffs. Education Finance and Policy, 8, 494-527.
11.
HannawayJ.MittlemanJ. (2011). Education politics and policy in an era of evidence. In MitchelD. E.CrowsonR. L.ShippsD. (Eds.), Shaping education policy: Power and process (pp. 81-91). New York, NY: Routledge.
12.
HillP. (2006). The costs of collective bargaining agreements and related district policies. In HannawayJ.RotherhamA. J. (Eds.), Collective bargaining in education: Negotiating change in today’s schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
13.
IngleW. K.WillisP. C.FritzJ. (2015). Collective bargaining agreement provisions in the wake of Ohio Teacher Evaluation System legislation. Educational Policy, 29, 18-50.
14.
IngleW. K.WillisP. C.HerdA. (2017). Defining “comparable”: An analysis of reduction in force provisions in Ohio school districts. Journal of School Leadership, 27, 68-93.
15.
KahlenbergR. D. (2006). The history of collective bargaining among teachers. In HannawayJ.RotherhamA. J. (Eds.), Collective bargaining in education: Negotiating change in today’s schools (pp. 7-26). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
16.
KershawJ. A.McKeanR. N. (1962). Teacher shortages and salary schedules. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
17.
KoskiW. S.HorngE. L. (2007). Facilitating the teacher quality gap? Collective bargaining agreements, teacher hiring and transfer rules, and teacher assignment among schools in California. Education Finance and Policy, 2, 262-300.
18.
LankfordM.LoebS.WyckoffJ. (2002). Teacher sorting and the plight of urban schools. A descriptive analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24, 37-62.
19.
MalinM. H. (2012). Papers from the Associations of the American Law Schools 2012 Annual Meeting Section of Labor Relations and Employment Law: Sifting through the wreckage of the tsunami that hit public sector collective bargaining. Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, 16, 533-629.
20.
McLendonM. K.HearnJ. C.MokherC. G. (2009). Partisans, professionals and power: The role of political factors in state higher education funding. The Journal of Higher Education, 80, 686-713.
21.
MoeT. M. (2006). Bottom-up structure: Collective bargaining, transfer rights, and the education of disadvantaged children. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University. Retrieved from ERIC database. ERIC Document ED508944.
22.
OddenA.KellyC. (2002). Paying teachers for what they know and can do: New and smarter compensation strategies to improve schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
23.
PogodzinskiB.UmpsteadR.WittJ. (2015). Teacher evaluation reform implementation and labor relations. Journal of Education Policy, 30, 540-561.
24.
StrunkK. O.GrissomJ. A. (2010). Do strong unions shape district policies? Collective bargaining, teacher contract restrictiveness, and the political power of teachers’ unions. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 32, 389-406.
25.
StrunkK. O.ReardonS. (2010). Measuring the strength of teachers’ unions: An empirical application of the partial independence item response approach. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 35, 629-670.
26.
ToutkoushianR. K.HollisP. (1998). Using panel data to examine legislative demand for higher education. Education Economics, 6, 141-157.
27.
UmpsteadR.PogodzinskiB.LundD. (2013). An analysis of state teacher evaluation laws enacted in response to the federal race to the top initiative. Education Law Reporter, 286, 795-823.
28.
WirtF.KirstM. (1992). Schools in conflict: Political turbulence in American education (3rd ed.). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.
29.
WirtF.KirstM. (2009). The political dynamics of American education (4th ed.). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.
30.
YoungsP.PogodzinskiB.GaleyS. (2015). How labor management relations and human resource policies affect the process of teacher assignment in urban school districts. Educational Administration Quarterly, 51, 214-246.
31.
ZumetaW. (2010). The great recession: Implications for higher education. In WechslerH. (Eds.), The NEA 2010 almanac of higher education (pp. 29-42). Washington, DC: National Education Association.
