by AFT President Sandra Feldman
April 2001

New study finds
gains made by
teachers' unions
benefit kids, too.

One of the many fallacies spouted by opponents of teachers' unions is that unions are obstacles to improving education. This suggests that when teachers win, students lose. But to say that the interests of students and teachers are in conflict defies simple logic. Anyone who has visited a classroom understands that teachers and students work toward the same goal. Happily, the release of a significant new study confirms this commonsense understanding of shared interests.

Published in the latest issue of the Harvard Educational Review, the study ("Do Teacher Unions Hinder Educational Performance?") documents a state-by-state comparison of student achievement on the two standard college entrance exams, the SAT and the ACT. It found that the average scores in states that are heavily unionized are more than 50 points higher on the SAT exam than the scores from non-unionized states. And the results on the ACT are comparable.

These tests are not the only measures of student aptitude and knowledge that could have been used, of course, but they do offer some obvious advantages. First, since high school students all over the country who hope to go to college take at least one of these exams, researchers can use the scores to make nationwide comparisons. Second, since these tests are ones that students themselves see as vitally important to their futures, the results reflect what students can do when they are most highly motivated to succeed. (While there's a growing debate over standardized college admissions tests, the issues involved have no bearing on the new study’s findings.)

Findings based on hard data

Researchers Lala Carr Steelman, Brian Powell, and Robert M. Carini were careful to avoid pitfalls that might bias their findings. Unlike previous researchers who have explored this subject, for example, they controlled for the number and types of students taking the tests in various states and for other critical factors such as parental education, family income, race, and gender. But no matter what factors the three researchers added to the mix, students in states where teachers were strongly unionized scored significantly higher.

The study's authors cite a number of educational factors positively associated with teachers' unions that may account for the higher test scores in unionized states. Among the factors are "better working conditions; greater worker autonomy, security, and dignity; improved administration; better training of teachers; and greater levels of faculty professionalism."

These factors would make a positive difference for students as well. In other words, the "benefits" that teachers' unions have struggled to achieve are beneficial for kids, too.

That's why the suggestion that, if teachers win, kids lose, is both silly and cynical. Why would people who devote themselves to helping young people learn want to push for policies that would be detrimental to their life's work? Likewise, it follows that those measures that attract and keep good teachers and help them do a better job also help their students.

More professionals joining unions

The Harvard Review article reaffirms what many educators and others have long known-unions mean quality for everyone involved. That's why so many other professionals, including nurses, doctors, and psychologists, increasingly are joining unions-because unions help them improve the quality of their work.

Too often, in calling for commonsense reforms in education, teachers have been criticized as self-serving. For years teachers' unions have asserted that smaller class size makes a critical difference in learning-and they were accused of simply wanting to make teachers' jobs easier. Today, of course, almost no one disputes the rock-solid research that supports the commonsense argument that teachers can teach better, and students can learn more, in smaller classes.

An equally logical conclusion flows from the findings of this important new study-when unionized teachers achieve better conditions, it means their students get a better education. For the sake of our children and their future, let's hope it doesn't take too long to convince the skeptics about this truth.