THE LINKAGES BETWEEN TEACHER UNIONS AND STUDENT-ACHIEVEMENT

Over the past decade, researchers have uncovered a positive teacher un ion productivity effect in the public schools and have further demonst rated that the benefits of unionized schooling accrue primarily to the average student, possibly at the expense of other students. At presen t, however, the moderators of the union-achievement relationship have not been definitively identified. After surveying literature from the fields of education, industrial relations, and organizational theory, a model of how teacher unions influence student achievement was constr ucted and tested. The teacher union productivity effect was found to b e primarily generated by organizational changes in response to unioniz ation rather than by specific union bargaining gains.