Study finds teacher strikes are effective in improving wages and working conditions

A detailed study of more than 770 teacher strikes in the United States between 2007 and 2023 finds that strikes benefited teachers and classrooms, with no measurable impact on students. did.

Melissa Arnold Ryan, assistant professor of public policy at the Rockefeller School of Public Policy, is the lead author of the study “Causes and Consequences of the U.S. Teacher Strike,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

This study investigated how strikes affect public school teachers’ wages, working conditions, and productivity, as well as the reasons behind strikes. The authors found that 89% of strikes were aimed at increasing wages, and more than 50% were aimed at improving conditions, such as reducing class sizes or increasing the number of support staff.

And strikes generally work. Teacher salaries increased by an average of 8% by the fifth year after the strike. Class sizes have decreased and spending per student has increased. And districts spent more on student support staff such as nurses and social workers.

“Despite legal restrictions in many states, teacher strikes have proven to be a powerful tool for advancing worker interests, and the effectiveness of strikes in the 1980s and 1990s “That’s in contrast to the decline in air traffic controllers since President Reagan fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers in 1981,” Lyon said, noting that people are “nullifying the effectiveness of the strike.” . However, this study shows that over the past 16 years, teacher strikes have been a powerful tool for achieving increased compensation in the public sector. ”

According to research, teacher strikes have affected approximately 11.5 million students, resulting in a total of 3,403 school days canceled over the past 16 years (48 million student days absent).

Still, the researchers found “no evidence of a significant positive or negative impact of strikes on students.” The strike, which lasted more than two weeks, caused a slight drop in math performance, but it recovered within a year. And most teacher strikes in the United States were short-lived, with two out of three ending within five days.

The study’s co-authors are Matthew Craft, associate professor of education and economics at Brown University, and director of research and evaluation at Accelerate, a nonprofit organization that researches strategies to improve student learning. Mr. Matthew Steinberg is an educational economist.

Ryan, who researches education policy including inequality, governance, and teacher politics and policy, is taking a leave of absence from university this year as a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Academy of Education.

This research complements her previous research, which will soon be published in the American Educational Research Journal, and shows that the teaching profession has improved historically in various aspects such as social prestige, student interest, teacher preparation, and job satisfaction. This indicates that we are facing a downturn.

The study comes at a critical time, at the start of the school year, when the teaching profession faces unprecedented challenges and Americans are witnessing a surge in strikes, spurred in part by the massive teacher strike of 2018. Ta.