The Fordham Institute for advancing educational excellence has teamed up with Education Reform Now to draft a detailed report on the strength of teachers unions throughout the United States. The authors, Amber M. Winkler, Ph.D. , Janie Scull , Dara Zeehandelaar, Ph.D., claim that this is the “most comprehensive analysis of American teacher unions’ strength ever conducted, ranking all fifty states and the District of Columbia according to the power and influence of their state-level unions.” The authors evaluated a total of 37 different variables broken down into five main categories:
- Resources and Membership
- Involvement in Politics
- Scope of Bargaining
- State Policies
- Perceived Influence
The study analyzed factors ranging from union membership and revenue to state bargaining laws to campaign contributions, and included such measures such as the alignment between specific state policies and traditional union interests and a unique stakeholder survey. The report sorts the fifty-one jurisdictions into five tiers, ranking their teacher unions from strongest to weakest and providing in-depth profiles of each.
As might be expected, generally the teachers unions in the Northeast and West Coast are ranked higher in the report, although there certainly are exceptions to the rule. For example, Alabama’s teachers union ranks the highest on political expenditures, even higher than Wisconsin, whose teachers unions’ political wrangling with a conservative gubernatorial administration have made many headlines in the past few years.
For more information, including an interactive map, a short video introduction, a full draft of the report, various sections of the report, and state-by-state breakdowns, please visit: http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/how-strong-are-us-teacher-unions.html
