Across the country, teachers are going on strike. In fact, Pennsylvania has more teacher strikes than any other state, possibly a result of a law that allows local teachers’ unions to strike twice in the same school year. The strikes have drawn national attention because of their racial and political undertones, but they also are drawing attention because of the effects on students.
Teachers’ strikes can last from one day to several weeks and affect students in the process, despite the efforts of many schools to keep classes running normally. In addition to the disruption of daily classroom activities, striking teachers may not respond to student emails at night or grading during weekends, and they will usually decline to supervise extracurricular activities. Some non-union teachers decide not to walk the picket line, but most do, in order to protect their jobs.
Although some strikes are local and focus on a district’s contract, others are broader in scope and aim to change state policy. In a new NBER working paper, my colleague Leslie Finger and I analyze data from 772 districts and more than 70,000 newspaper articles to identify the causes and consequences of teachers’ strikes. We find that strikes increase annual teacher compensation by about eight percent, or roughly $10,000, and improve working conditions such as reducing class sizes, increasing funding per pupil, and adding new noninstructional staff. These improvements in pay and working conditions are largely due to new money for the district from the state, rather than a reallocation of existing district funds.