Cut From the Same Cloth? Comparing Urban District CBAs Within States and Across the United States

Abstract

There is considerable speculation and some empirical evidence that teacher collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in urban school districts are more restrictive to district administrators than CBAs in other districts. We build on prior work by comparing urban with nonurban CBAs in three states—California, Michigan, and Washington—and, for a set of high-profile provisions, with those in CBAs from 72 of the largest districts in the country outside those states. We find that urban CBAs are more restrictive than nonurban CBAs in all three states, but there is still considerable heterogeneity across districts in overall restrictiveness and in high-profile provisions.