Here’s Terry Moe speaking on his latest book, Special Interests: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools.
Jay P. Greene's Blog
With Help From Some Friends
Here’s Terry Moe speaking on his latest book, Special Interests: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
The nations that regularly kick America’s butt on OECD PISA TIMMS have very strong teachers’ unions. The states with the best NAEP results have strong unions and liberal Democrat traditions. The states with the worst results are Right to Work states with conservative Republican traditions.
Unions block the Corporate Reform Agenda because it is bad education period. Vouchers, charters and testing are all failing reforms.
Time for WWFD (what would Finland do?)
Doug — Did you know that the months with the highest ice cream consumption also have the highest number of drowning deaths? If you don’t believe that ice cream causes drowning, then you might also doubt that unionization causes high achievement in states and countries where it is present.
In both cases the correlation is not causation because there are other factors that are causing both variables. Heat causes ice cream consumption and swimming. And wealth causes high achievement and unionization (it is an inefficiency that wealthy states and countries can more easily indulge).
See Hoxby 1996 in QJE for a rigorous causal analysis of the relationship between unionization and achievement.
JP,
All it means is that there is no negative connection between strong teacher unionism and results. Did you know that there is no proven link between smoking and cancer? I guess correlation is excellent for policy making in many circumstances.
When people are presented with this strong ‘correlation’ between teacher unionism and results they can draw their own conclusions.
Your claim does not mean “that there is no negative connection between strong teacher unionism and results.” Wealthy states and countries that indulge teacher unions may be performing significantly worse than they otherwise would. In fact, according to the most rigorous research on the effect of teacher unions (see for example Hoxby in QJE in 1996), those places are being harmed academically.
Not to mention that WWFD? is based on the assumption that America is part of Europe. For a rigorous analysis testing this hypothesis see Jefferson, et. al. in Continental Congress Proceedings (1776). See also the reanalysis by Tocqueville (1832).
Try to be serious Greg, the Tea party stuff just makes a fool whoever takes that position. There is nothing unique or special or exceptional about the USA. It is just a country like the rest.
JP you are just digging yourself in deeper and deeper. Finland leads the world with strong unions but would be doing better with weaker unions. P-L-E-A-S-E.
Calling people a fool and saying “P-L-E-A-S-E” is not an argument. It’s just mindless name-calling.
Doug — Here’s how this blog works: I’m happy to have discussion and debate but people have to actually engage in constructive discussion and have to debate the points. If they just want to use it as a platform to repeat their own perspective, they should get their own blog and make their case there.
I’ll delete comments and block folks if they can’t handle this.
Rank by NAEP State Right to Work (RTW) or Union (U) Obama (O) or McCain (Mc)
1 Massachusetts U O
2 New Hampshire U O
3 Vermont U O
4 South Dakota U Mc
5 Montana U Mc
6 North Dakota RTW Mc
7 Maine U O
8 Virginia RTW O
9 New Jersey U O
10 Minnesota U O
11 Colorado U O
12 Iowa RTW O
13 Missouri U Mc
14 Connecticut U O
15 Wyoming RTW Mc
16 Ohio U O
17 Wisconsin U O
18 Illinois U O
19 Nebraska RTW Mc
20 Kentucky U Mc
21 Kansas RTW Mc
22 New York U O
23 Indiana U O
24 Delaware U O
25 Washington U O
26 Idaho RTW Mc
27 Michigan U O
28 Utah RTW Mc
29 Pennsylvania U O
30 Oregon U O
31 Oklahoma RTW Mc
32 North Carolina RTW O
33 Maryland U O
34 Rhode Island U O
35 West Virginia U Mc
36 Texas RTW Mc
37 Tennessee RTW Mc
38 South Carolina RTW Mc
39 Arkansas RTW Mc
40 Georgia RTW Mc
41 Florida RTW O
42 Alaska U Mc
43 Arizona RTW Mc
44 Mississippi RTW Mc
45 Louisiana RTW Mc
46 Alabama RTW Mc
47 Nevada RTW O
48 New Mexico U O
49 Hawaii U O
50 California U O
Repeating the same point is not the same as responding to a criticism. You’ve already said that unionized states have higher achievement. I’ve noted that this is not a causal relationship. You reply by repeating the higher achievement of unionized states in the form of a list.
Doug — Here’s how this blog works: I’m happy to have discussion and debate but people have to actually engage in constructive discussion and have to debate the points. If they just want to use it as a platform to repeat their own perspective, they should get their own blog and make their case there.
I’ll delete comments and block folks if they can’t handle this.