The Effect of Teachers' Organizations on Salaries and Class Size

Abstract

IN recent years, a growing body of lit- erature on the effects of teachers' organizations on salaries has appeared.Unfortunately, by limiting themselves to a concern over salaries, the authors may have ignored other important effects of collective negotiations.Furthermore, limitations of the scope of the previous work suggest that some additional study of the salary issue may be appropriate.It is the purpose of this article to report on research concerning the relationships between collective negotiations and both teachers' salaries and class size.These two issues are related, and both are critical in formulating policy toward public school education.The relevance of class size to the problems of financing education is emphasized in the Final Report of the Presi-Study of over one hundred elementary school districts in Cook County, Illinois indicates that teachers' organizations increase salaries in suburban areas through collective bargaining, as they do in larger cities.Such increases in the schools studied averaged $165 per year, a result consistent in relative size of bargaining effect with that found by Kasper, Thornton, and Baird and Landon in studies published earlier in this Review.In addition, it appears that teacher bargaining is associated with a larger student-teacher ratio.This would suggest that teacher organizations may be accepting larger classes in return for higher salaries.