(1) (2) (3)
School Reforms Teacher Reforms Student Reforms
VARIABLES Access Quality Access Quality Access Quality
Union Expenditures (in millions)
Lobbying 0.0682 -0.318*** -0.0110 -0.0865 -0.0223 -0.119
(0.0436) (0.117) (0.0216) (0.0779) (0.136) (0.0838) Contributions, Gifts & Grants -0.0109 -1.505** 0.222* -1.032** 1.339* -0.0452
(0.232) (0.623) (0.115) (0.414) (0.724) (0.445) Representational Activities 0.0225 0.341*** -0.00594 0.198** -0.195 0.0722 (0.0491) (0.132) (0.0244) (0.0877) (0.154) (0.0944)
First year of term 0.0753 0.188 0.246** 0.0882 0.455 0.335
(0.236) (0.635) (0.117) (0.421) (0.738) (0.453)
Second year of term 0.0414 -0.108 0.0296 -0.472* -0.00225 0.594**
(0.141) (0.381) (0.0701) (0.253) (0.442) (0.272)
Third year of term -0.0453 -0.794 0.181 0.173 0.350 0.408
(0.254) (0.684) (0.126) (0.454) (0.795) (0.488)
Observations 179 179 179 179 179 179
R-squared 0.517 0.841 0.396 0.663 0.897 0.653
Notes: All regressions include a constant, year and state fixed effects, political and economic variables and other demographic and education controls. Standard errors in parentheses. ***p <0.01, **p <0.05, *p <0.1
Table 1.6 presents the results of this robustness check. One observation is that the significances are reduced, particularly for the coefficients of contributions, divided government and term limits, suggesting that these variables may have an influence on the mere mention of reforms in legislation. Nevertheless, after correcting for directional differences in policy, the most interesting findings pull through. We find a cleaner result for the influence motive, that is, contributions affect only teacher reforms, which yielddirectbenefits, while lobbying affects only school reforms, which yieldindirectbenefits. The educational crisis effect, yielding a negative estimate of math scores in Model 3, and the policy momentum effect, yielding a positive estimate of math scores in Model 1, survive the correction.
A third robustness check would be to test whether the results are robust to other measures of teachers’ union strength, in particular, union membership. In Table 1.7 we regress the same specification as presented in equations (1.1) and (1.2), but instead of union expenditures, we use the number of voting union members as a proportion of public school teachers in the state.
We consider only members of the AFT and the NEA, the two largest teachers’ unions in the U.S. Interestingly, the only reforms union membership has an effect on are the ones that have a direct impact on teachers. The data reveal that union membership influences only teacher quality reforms, the sign being negative. The fact that membership is found to affect only quality reforms is in line with Segal et al. (1992) and Kang’s (2016) finding that support for a reform has a weaker effect than opposition to a reform.
Next we check the robustness of our results to the fluctuations in the electoral cycle. To this
end we add to the baseline regressions dummy variables for the years within an electoral term.
The base year for these dummy variables is the election year. Table 1.8 produces the estimation results for this test. The point estimates for electoral term dummies reveal an increase in teacher access reforms in the first year of mandate. We also find a positive and significant effect on student quality reforms on the second year of the term, suggesting that politicians only manage to enact quality reforms once the dust from elections has settled. The main results regarding union expenditures survive the inclusion of these electoral term variables.
Table 1.9. Fiscal position
(1) (2) (3)
School Reforms Teacher Reforms Student Reforms
VARIABLES Access Quality Access Quality Access Quality
Union Expenditures (in millions)
Lobbying 0.0694 -0.359*** 0.000852 -0.0641 -0.0173 -0.147
(0.0455) (0.127) (0.0234) (0.0847) (0.144) (0.0913) Contributions, Gifts & Grants 0.134 -1.281** 0.241** -1.084** 1.047 0.0423
(0.228) (0.639) (0.118) (0.425) (0.724) (0.458) Representational Activities -0.0456 0.285** -0.0213 0.188** -0.0497 0.0741 (0.0509) (0.142) (0.0262) (0.0947) (0.161) (0.102) State tax revenues (in billions) 0.0329 -0.0543 0.0163 0.0323 -0.0821 -0.0301 (0.0220) (0.0615) (0.0113) (0.0409) (0.0697) (0.0441) State outstanding debt (in billions) 0.0448** 0.0781 -0.000189 -0.00446 -0.104* 0.0103
(0.0180) (0.0505) (0.00929) (0.0336) (0.0572) (0.0362)
Observations 179 179 179 179 179 179
R-squared 0.546 0.838 0.388 0.656 0.901 0.645
Notes: All regressions include a constant, year and state fixed effects, political and economic variables and other demographic and education controls. Standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
The final robustness check explores whether our results are subject to variations in the fiscal position of state governments. Since access reforms are more expensive for the government to implement than quality reforms, taxation and debt may matter for their enactment. We check this by adding to the base regressions variables for state tax revenues and state outstanding debt, both measured in 2009 dollars.
Table 1.9 presents the results of this exercise, revealing that debt indeed plays a role for certain types of education reforms. Government debt correlates positively with school access reforms and negatively with student access reforms, suggesting that a substitution occurs between student and school access reforms. Note that examples of student access reforms include providing student scholarships. Such reforms impose spending obligations on the government that have longer terms than school access reforms, which provide, say, improvements in school infrastructure.
Since government debt is highly persistent, high outstanding debt urges governments to enact less long-term, and more short-term access reforms. Regardless of this effect, the coefficients on union expenditures on education reforms remain unchanged.
1.10. CONCLUSIONS
1.10 Conclusions
This study identifies the factors affecting the enactment of primary and secondary public edu-cation reform proposals, and disaggregates eduedu-cation reforms into two general reform types:
access reformsthat aim at broadening the coverage of education andquality reformsthat aim at improving the effectiveness and productivity of education.
We find that the number of enacted quality and access reforms responds differently to various political-economic factors. For instance, both student quality reforms respond positively to times of deteriorating education outcomes. The data also suggests that there is some policy momen-tum in school-related access and quality policies. That is, improved educational performance encourages politicians to improve school infrastructure as well as enact more school choice reforms.
This study also finds evidence for the fact that teachers’ union strength correlates positively with access reforms and negatively with quality reforms. This is the first study that provides empirical support for the differential effect of teachers’ unions on access and quality reforms.
The results moreover elucidate the inner workings of the teachers unions, distinguishing the political activities that have the strongest effects on reforms. Both lobbying and contributions are effective at opposing school quality reforms, while only contributions are effective at influencing teacher reforms. This finding aligns with the “influence motive” emphasized by the campaign contributions literature. Contributions of an interest group affect only the policies that directly serve the group’s interest. These main results are robust to simultaneity, different measures of the reform and union variables, and variations to the political cycle and the fiscal environment.
A puzzling finding of this study is the positive correlation between union representational activities, which involve collective bargaining and contract negotiations, and the number of enacted quality reforms. One avenue for further research would be to explore the mechanisms behind this relationship in more detail. Another possible extension could be to address the inability of our reform data to distinguish between progressive or regressive policy changes within access or quality reforms. Counting the number of bills containing quality- or access-related terms in their summary effectively considers as equivalent the bills that, say, allow more charter schools and the bills that limit the number of charter schools. Since such subtleties have differential effects on the behavior of interest groups, an interesting refinement would be to take these distinctions into account.
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