We here at The Policy Minute could tell you all the benefits communities, school administrators, educators, students and families gain from having a unionized schools, but you don’t have to take our word that students just do better when teachers are treated fairly.
A recently published study of student learning in California charter schools found that students in charter schools where the teachers formed a union fared better than schools with non-union teachers.
Teachers’ unions and school performance: Evidence from California charter schools
Abstract
We examine the impact of unions on the quality of educational production by studying a wave of unionization among California charter schools and administrative data on student achievement. We first present new data showing that unions are much more prevalent among charter schools than suggested by previous studies. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we find that unionization increases achievement in mathematics and has no statistically significant impact on English test scores.
The full paper is available here.