This study by Dan Goldhaber and colleagues examines whether the restrictiveness of a district’s bargaining contract is influenced by “spillover” from contracts in a nearby community. In other words, do district contracts resemble one another simply because districts are close to one another? The theory is that district agreements might come to mimic each other, since nearby districts compete for teachers and there may be an impulse to codify working conditions. Analysts examined CBAs in 270 public school districts in Washington State and coded 633 provisions. First, they found that districts within fifty miles of one another have similar levels of restrictiveness. More importantly, they also found that bargaining structures influence consistency of bargaining provisions. Specifically, both management and labor have structures in place that provide, among other services, bargaining support for multiple districts and multiple local affiliates. Districts have what are called Educational Service Districts (or ESD’s), and the union has Uniservs. Analysts found that districts within the same ESD or same Uniserv have similar levels of restrictiveness—as do districts that share both an ESD and Uniserv. Further, they are the primary influencer in determining bargaining outcomes—i.e., they are the driver for what we previously thought was the impact of geographic distance. Why is this important? Knowing the channels by which CBA’s influence one another is one way in which bargaining reforms—or setbacks—can be spread more quickly. Since these district and union structures appear to serve as conduits for replication of provisions, perhaps they should also be the objects of reformers’ attention.
SOURCE: Dan Goldhaber, Lesley Lavery, and Roddy Theobald, My End of the Bargain: Are There Cross-District Effects in Teacher Contract Provisions?, CEDR Working Paper 2012-2.2 (Seattle, WA: Center for Education Data and Research, 2012).
