Current Perspectives on Teacher Unionization,and What They’re Missing

Rent-Seeking

The rent-seeking perspective argues that teachers’ unions pursue teachers’ job interests at the expense of student interests. This perspective holds that teachers’ unions extract rents such as salary increases and smaller class sizes through collective bargaining. These rents reflect teachers’ job interests, particularly those that align with union interests (Moe, 2011). For example, making it difficult to fire teachers can provide security for teachers while also benefiting unions by retaining dues-paying members. Unions are able to negotiate for these conditions that help teachers and their unions, but the rent-seeking view argues that they do not improve schooling, on the whole. This view has arguably dominated political debates and the empirical literature in the past two decades (see Cowen & Strunk, 2015 for a review of the empirical literature). As I describe below, there are, in essence, three strands of the rent-seeking view: (1) efficiency, (2) reform blocking, (3) racial mismatch between teachers and public-school families.

Some empirical work supporting the rent-seeking perspective of teacher unionization has found that collective bargaining increases the costs of education and decreases the efficiency of education production. The most prominent of these studies is Hoxby’s (1996) examination of teachers’ union strength and educational productivity, in which she uses changes in policies facilitating collective bargaining as instruments for teacher unionization. She finds evidence that stronger teachers’ unions are associated with increased school inputs (spending, salaries, and pupil to teacher ratios) but decreased productivity (high school dropout rates). Since then, other studies of union activities have supported the idea that teacher collective bargaining decreases efficiency by increasing costs without improving student achievement (Marianno & Strunk, 2018; Strunk, 2011; Strunk & McEachin, 2011).

Other literature on rent-seeking has emphasized that teachers often benefit from the status quo and therefore have incentives to block reform attempts that could have otherwise made schools better for students (e.g., Moe, 2011, 2015). Moe (2011) writes that teachers’ unions engage in the “power of blocking: the power of the teachers unions to stifle true reform and preserve an ill-constructed system that is simply not built to provide children with the best education possible” (p. 277). In theory, this causes unions to block reform of defunct structures of education policy and politics because they directly benefit from the preservation of those structures. Other empirical work has supported this argument that strong teachers’ unions block policies like school choice and performance pay plans (Finger, 2018; Hartney & Flavin, 2011; West & Mykerezi, 2011) and restrict school district operations (Marianno et al., 2018), although the authors do not necessarily argue that these reforms would have improved school outcomes.

Though it has received less attention in the economics of education literature, a third strand of the rent-seeking view elucidates an important racial dimension to the critique that teachers’ unions purse their own interests at the expense of student interests. This strand emphasizes the racial composition of the teacher workforce and the mismatch between teachers (and their unions) and students over the past 50 years. Notably, during the 1960s and 1970s, some authentic tensions between the largely White teacher workforce and students and parents of color in urban schools—as in NYC’s community control experiment—led to an enduring portrayal of teachers and parents of color as enemies. The infamous 1968 clash between the United Federation of Teachers and the largely Black community in Ocean Hill-Brownsville looms large in this accounting of teachers’ unions (D’Amico, 2016; Goldstein, 2014; Perrillo, 2012). When teachers’ unions resisted the calls of community control activists for more power in making school decisions, many on the American Left began to see the teachers’ interests in opposition to the interests of students of color and broader calls for racial justice (Goldstein, 2014; Perrillo, 2012). This condemnation of the teachers’ unions provided legitimacy to a long-held view of pro-business conservatives that teachers’ unions pursue the narrow interests of their members at the expense of students and educational productivity. This also may have contributed to a more managed effort at presenting teachers and parents, particularly parents of color, as enemies (Perrillo, 2012).

Teacher Voice

The teacher voice perspective focuses on the alignment between teacher and student interests. Proponents of this perspective argue that collective bargaining and teachers’ union strength can improve school policy by giving teachers the opportunity to share their knowledge and opinions at the workplace (Johnson et al., 2012). Leveraging economist Albert O. Hirschman’s (1970) theory of “voice” as a resource for organizational improvement, this perspective posits that the collective bargaining process amplifies the “voice” of those that have the most knowledge about students and are the workers responsible for implementing school policies. By allowing them to improve the system from the inside, they are able to discuss working conditions and shape school policies collectively with education decision makers, instead of “exiting” the district or teacher workforce. As I detail below, the teacher voice perspective argues that teachers’ union power improves educational systems by providing valuable knowledge grounded in teacher expertise and critical components of policy implementation.

A core belief under the teacher voice perspective is that teachers have critical information that is grounded in educator experience and expertise. Teachers’ unions play a valuable role in communicating that information to decision makers in education, largely school district officials (Ravitch, 2007). Teachers have the greatest knowledge regarding instructional practices like building positive classroom cultures and promoting academic development. Proponents of this view argue that when teachers’ voices are elevated by unions, they improve educational outcomes by sharing that knowledge with school district leaders (Johnson et al., 2009). Teachers’ unions have long argued that teachers’ interests are aligned with student interests, and that teachers’ unions are therefore advocating on behalf of not just teachers but also students and schools (Goldstein, 2014). In the early days of teacher unionization, Margaret Haley was a prominent figure vocalizing this notion. In 1904, for example, she argued that teachers’ unions could “pursue both the self-interest and the public interest” to improve the lives of children if they received enough support in the form of salaries, job security, smaller class sizes, and a role in policymaking (Rousmaniere, 2005, p. 111). This argument was revived in recent teacher strikes, such as those in Chicago in 2012 and 2019, as well as the large-scale #RedforEd strikes in 2018 and 2019.

Others have also argued that teachers have critical knowledge regarding how policies can and should be implemented on the ground (Cohen & Mehta, 2017). For schools to function effectively, the teacher voice perspective holds that unions are needed to facilitate processes of policy implementation. Some have claimed that unions are a necessary check on school administrator power, which can be arbitrary and uninformed. For example, Ravitch (2007) has argued that, in order to effectively implement education policies, school administrators must gain an understanding of the needs on the ground from teachers, and that the most effective way to acquire that information is through the teachers’ union leaders. She writes,

School reform cannot possibly succeed when teachers—who are on the frontlines of implementation—are left out of the decision-making process. . . Only in an atmosphere of mutual respect can administrators and teachers produce the kind of partnership that will benefit students. And administrators cannot achieve this collaborative atmosphere unless they are willing to talk with and listen to the leaders chosen by teachers to represent them.

According to this view, teachers’ unions are key actors in obtaining the necessary buy-in of their members for policy implementation to be successful.

Some empirical work has found that when teachers are not able to exercise voice, they are more likely to exit the system, thus increasing teacher turnover and requiring additional energy and attention directed toward hiring and training new teachers (Baron, 2018; Choi & Chung, 2016; Roth, 2017). The teacher voice perspective holds that teachers’ unions, therefore, provide productive channels for teachers to discuss issues with school and district leadership instead of leaving the profession (Choi & Chung, 2016). Some work has connected this voice mechanism of unionization to student achievement. One study, for example, finds that the labor restrictions in Wisconsin’s Act 10 decreased student achievement by lowering teacher salaries and increasing teacher turnover (Baron, 2018). Another study finds that teachers’ union influence leads to higher academic achievement concentrated in Hispanic and Black students and low- and mid-socioeconomic status districts (Han & Keefe, 2022). Finally, though they do not reference the teacher voice perspective, Brunner et al. (2020) find that strong teachers’ unions led low-income districts in states undergoing school finance reforms to spend the money in ways that increased student achievement at substantially higher levels relative to areas with weak unions. They frame this outcome as evidence of rent-seeking behavior in which teacher interests aligned with student interests.

Industry-Specific Conceptions of Teachers’ Unions

Though dominant perspectives focus almost exclusively on teachers within the four walls of school buildings, teachers are also parents, community members, and local employees. In many cities, schools are among the biggest local employers (Henig et al., 1999). As such, the salaries and working conditions of these school employees can affect the ecosystem of local education in perhaps unseen or indirect ways. For example, the children of school employees are likely much more affected by the salaries of their parents than their teachers, yet current theoretical frameworks largely ignore these broader implications. Teachers and their unions affect students in myriad ways outside of narrow measures of education-specific outcomes, and policies that affect them do not necessarily travel directly through union membership or collective bargaining agreements.

Additionally, education decision-making has increasingly shifted to general-purpose arenas run by elected officials such as mayors, state legislators, and their appointees (Henig, 2013). The battles teachers’ unions are currently fighting are not against only education specific bodies or exclusively about education issues. Teachers’ unions now must compete with other interest groups that have no particular interest in education issues on a playing field in which the rules and regulations are less favorable to them than those in education-specific arenas such as local school districts. This means that they may need to build alliances with other interest groups that change their strategic decision making in new and important ways.

Lack of Attention to Racial, Class-Based, and Gender Dynamics of Unionism

The rent-seeking and teacher voice perspectives do not fully attend to the ways that teachers’ unions are shaped (and shape) longstanding gender, class, and racial inequalities. Many historical accounts of teachers’ unions, particularly in the United States but also elsewhere (e.g., Canada and Great Britain), describe how they began and evolved as organizations that represented the interests of a largely white and female teacher workforce (Goldstein, 2014; Murphy, 1990; Perrillo, 2012; Podair, 2002; Rousmaniere, 2005; Smaller, 2015). Additionally, teachers have occupied an in-between space, identifying both with working-class labor and middle-class professionals that has made them both partners and outsiders in the eyes of other labor and civil rights groups (Rousmaniere, 2005).

Teachers’ unions were founded within the context of deeply patriarchal, white-dominant societies, often under the leadership of white men who did little to challenge the prevailing societal norms (Murphy, 1990; Smaller, 2015). Despite this, gender has played an important role in this history, with calls for teacher unionization and collective bargaining rights growing out of demands for protection against sexist treatment by administrators (Kahlenberg, 2006; Murphy, 1990). These were particularly prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, when groups of mainly unionized teachers across the globe joined feminist and civil rights organizations (Rottman et al., 2015).

The politics of education has been a key site of conflict and mediation in the struggle for both racial and economic justice, and teachers’ unions have been intricately tied up in this conflict in complex and sometimes contradictory ways (Todd-Breland, 2018). The largely White and female teacher workforce and their unions have, throughout history, perceived racial justice aims as sometimes conflicting with their own (Perrillo, 2012). The NEA, for example, was slow to endorse school desegregation because they thought doing so would alienate Southern members of Congress; complicate pre-existing segregated local unions in the South; and threaten federal funding for K-12 education (Groff, 1960). Further, as noted above, when teachers fought for a voice in school decision-making in the 1960s, their unions clashed prominently with Black community control advocates who also fought to determine school curriculum, expenditures, and personnel decisions (Perrillo, 2012; Podair, 2002).

The rent-seeking perspective does address some of these tensions as part of a broader critique of teachers advocating for their own self-interest. However, the rent-seeking frame does not address the role of unions in exacerbating or dismantling racial inequality in an intersectional, ongoing, and nuanced way that attends to concepts of labor solidarity or other coalitional aspects of union activities (Rottman et al., 2015). The teacher voice perspective similarly does not deal with the complicity of teachers’ unions in allowing and reproducing racial and class-based inequalities between students and schools for generations (Weiner, 2015).

Focus on Single-Actor-Generated and Direct Effects

Although much of the literature on teachers’ unions has tended to focus on the narrow and acutely self-interested policy successes and losses that unions sustain (Henig et al., 2019), political scientists and economists have increasingly emphasized broader effects of unionization for members and nonmembers alike. These include increased support for redistribution, decreased racial resentment, and reduced income inequality (e.g., Dynarski, 2018; Farber et al., 2018; Frymer & Grumbach, 2021; Hacker & Pierson, 2010; Kelly & Witko, 2012; Mosimann & Pontusson, 2017; VanHeuvelen, 2020). Political Scientist, Margaret Levi (2003) explains these broader redistributive effects of unionization by emphasizing the “countervailing power” structure within the American political system that depends on unions to fight for “for human dignity and rights at the workplace and [to be] the major voice for the concerns of working people, be they middle-class, poor, or unemployed” (p. 46). Alliance building with other labor and social welfare groups is a key mechanism that she identifies for transforming labor away from the paradigm of business unionism and toward the more democratic and participatory social movement unionism.

Relatedly, some teachers’ unions have made efforts toward “common good bargaining” in which they focus on a broader set of demands than the bread and butter issues typically associated with union negotiations (McCartin et al., 2020). Such demands have focused on general-purpose issues including immigration, housing, racial justice, and healthcare. These demands can vary in their direct relationship with the school system. For example, some local teachers’ unions have negotiated for provisions that would ban immigration enforcement from taking place within schools, and the National Education Association has called for the cessation of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrests and deportations writ large.

Political science research on policy feedback has further considered such consequences of unions for the broader American political economy. Policy feedback is the theory that policies, rules, and programs can “make politics” by shaping political dynamics often in unintentional ways with long-term, downstream effects (Pierson, 1993). Hacker and Pierson (2010) have described how unions ³ pressure politicians to pursue redistributive policies that might be unpopular with big businesses and wealthy citizens who typically dominate general-purpose politics. They argue unions are one of the only progressive groups focused on economic issues, an argument also emphasized in the influential Civic Volunteerism Model proposed by Verba et al. (1995). Downstream policy feedback consequences of institutions that protect (or weaken) teachers’ unions may have enduring consequences for the political composition of state and local governments as well as the social and economic policies that they implement (Anzia & Moe, 2016; Flavin & Hartney, 2015). Yet, because of the dominance of the rent-seeking v. teacher voice dichotomy in the literature on teacher unionization, very little research exists to examine the implications of these broader consequences for students and schooling in America.

Who Is Involved in Progressive Coalition Building

I use the term “progressive” to refer to groups favoring social reforms that challenge the longstanding economic and political inequalities and increase the rights of marginalized groups. This includes teachers’ unions, other labor organizations, community organizations, and other social welfare groups. In Colorado, for example, the National Education Association affiliate has built alliances with a variety of progressive donors, activists, organizers, and groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League, Colorado Conservation Voters, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, and Colorado Trial Lawyers Association (Schrager & Witwer, 2016). State-by-state networks such as these have then been further supported and connected by national networks like America Votes, which lists both the AFT and NEA as partners alongside other public and private sector labor, gun safety, gender rights, economic opportunity, and anti-racist groups. ⁴ At the local level, teachers’ unions across the country also currently sit alongside school districts, city governments, community organizations, and other civic leaders in cross-sector, multi-issue collaborations to tackle complicated and interwoven challenges in urban governance (Clarke, 2017; Lyon & Henig, 2019).

Recent efforts of progressive caucuses within more traditional teachers’ unions have also pushed unions to work in concert with local community groups around social justice-oriented positions on issues like racial justice, economic policy, climate change, and gun control. This has been particularly prevalent in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in which internal groups focused on progressive issues have proliferated around the country. For example, the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) in Chicago, IL and the related Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) in New York, NY have organized around a message of social and racial justice with working groups focused around health justice and Black Lives Matter alongside more traditional concerns like school budgets and working conditions. Progressive caucus candidates have also won union leadership positions in some high profile, union elections in Los Angeles and Chicago. To the extent that these caucuses push teachers’ unions to strengthen their alliances with other progressive groups, they may increase the collective power of progressive coalitions and shift politics and policymaking broadly toward the priorities of relatively less advantaged groups.

Teachers’ unions are not a monolith; context matters greatly for understanding union activities (Strunk et al., 2018). As such, context also matters heavily for the composition and prioritization of coalitional partners. Political and economic conditions, as well as social and labor policies change the conditions under which teachers’ unions and their partners engage in complex community organizations, social networks, and other coalitions that advocate for a broad array of policies. Unions may at times trade-off their short-term interests for the sake of building or preserving relationships with partners (Poole, 2000). Since their coalitional partners are also making decisions about tactics under dynamic conditions, changes to partner influence and priorities could also affect how union influence plays out.

How Teachers’ Unions Function in Progressive Coalitions

Progressive coalitions can work together in formal roundtables, local labor councils, temporary single-issue campaigns, informal alliances, and even unstructured blocs with little between-group coordination. For example, the formal alliance in Colorado discussed above has coordinated resources in support of progressive electoral candidates, particularly at the state level. Members of this coalition have together built a “roundtable” or “donor table” to provide direct support toward progressive candidates. This electoral support has contributed to lasting shifts in the political control of the state (Schrager & Witwer, 2016). Such donor tables are not merely a Colorado-phenomenon and have been organizing in increasingly visible ways throughout the country from California to Texas to Maine. ⁵

Still, relatively formal alliances are not the only way that teachers’ unions engage in progressive coalition building. Teachers’ unions also directly advocate for education-specific policies within general-purpose arenas at the state level, and such activities require broad alliances and comprises (Constant, 2006; Hartney & Flavin, 2011). Perhaps as a result of these alliances, teachers’ unions have expressed public support for general-purpose policies including minimum wages and taxing the wealthy (American Federation of Teachers, 2017; Kusler, 2014).

This is not a new development. Some teachers’ unions have long engaged in such coalitions. An examination of activities at the local level shines a light on a long history of PCB teacher actions taken in the name of labor solidarity, social justice unionism, and social movement unionism (Poole, 2015; Rottman et al., 2015; Shirley, 2016). The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) provides a useful case study for this view of unionism (Poole, 2015; Rottman et al., 2015). Since at least the 1970s, the BCTF has prioritized labor solidarity and social movement unionism both implicitly and explicitly through alliances with the unions representing education assistants and school support workers, as well as their participation on broader labor councils including the British Columbia Federation of Labour (BCFed; Poole, 2015). The BCFed organizes workers in all sectors of the economy around safe workplaces and fair wages. The BCFed and BCTF are then both also members of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) that brings together labor groups across the country to advocate for the interests of working people. Alongside both domestic and international partners, the BCTF advocates against neoliberal policies, such as privatization and free-trade agreements (Rottman et al., 2015). Such broad, coalitional activities have both direct implications for policymaking and more indirect implications for worker power. By building capacity among workers, parents, and other progressive groups, teachers’ unions help to develop less structured networks that work together to form a political counterweight to economic elites (Hacker & Pierson, 2010; Warren, 2010).

Union coalition building has also been acutely evident in recent teacher strikes, likely because teacher strikes require broad organizational capacity and public support. Strikes in Chicago in 2012 and 2019, for example, demonstrated how teachers’ unions, particularly those with leadership prioritizing racial and social justice, can mobilize to use coalitional power (McCartin et al., 2020). In 2012 the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) developed a strategy that emphasized grassroots organizing and mobilization, as well as community partnerships (Ferman & Palazzolo, 2017). By engaging in “common good bargaining,” the CTU expanded the scope of bargaining to include social issues and racial justice, and this expansion helped the CTU to obtain a successful strike vote while also shaping the community perception of the strike more positively (Ashby & Bruno, 2016).

The perceived success of these progressive coalition building activities in Chicago has catalyzed a similar process for other union activity focused on community organizing and expanded social issues in Chicago and across the country (Cohen, 2016; Ferman & Palazzolo, 2017; McCartin et al., 2020). Coverage of the subsequent Chicago teacher strike in 2019 again focused on teachers’ unions bargaining for broader protections for working families by focusing on homelessness, immigration, and affordable housing (Smith & Davey, 2019). This broad community focus stemmed, in part, from the alliances that CTU members and leaders built with a number of community groups, charter school teachers, and other labor unions, including the service union that joined the teachers on strike (McCartin et al., 2020).

Why Teachers’ Unions Are Crucial Partners

A multitude of factors have both “pulled” and “pushed” teachers to participate in PCB activities. For one, there is a “pull” from within. Labor norms of solidarity and collective action are foundational to internal union organization, and at the same time, they imply and may in some cases require a certain, outward-looking emphasis on collaboration and support for other organizations, particularly labor groups. It is common practice within labor organizations, for example, to refuse to “cross a picket line” if another union is striking.

Teachers’ unions have also been “pushed” to rely on coalitional strength by changing labor conditions. Teachers’ unions across the country have faced new labor restrictions in the form of state-level limits on collective bargaining and the national Janus v. AFSCME (2018) decision. Teachers’ unions have also increasingly been the target of cross-state conservative advocacy networks that seek to weaken progressive coalitions (Hertel-Fernandez, 2018, 2019). Because of both push and pull factors, teachers’ unions are increasingly motivated to join forces with other groups where they can find common ground (or common enemies).

Teachers’ unions remain important actors in progressive coalitions because of their nationally federated structure, large numbers of members, and relative dominance in the US labor movement. Certainly, teachers’ unions do not always engage in broad-based community organizing for progressive issues. As noted in the rent-seeking literature discussed above, tensions at the local level between teachers’ unions and community groups have existed and persisted, particularly when the direct interests of teachers have conflicted with those of minoritized, working-class, and low-income groups (Henig et al., 1999; Shirley, 2016). On average, teachers are whiter, more female, and higher paid than the general population, and this can create mistrust between teachers’ unions and potential coalitional partners. Teachers have struggled for years to define themselves as professionals, a challenge they share with many other female-dominated occupations. This struggle means that teachers may be predisposed to protect their professional autonomy and reputation, at the expense of solidarity with other labor groups and community organizations (Shirley, 2016). Teachers and their unions have historically stopped short of calling for dramatic political change that would benefit lower income and minoritized groups at the expense of White, middle-class workers (Henig et al., 1999; Perrillo, 2012; Rousmaniere, 2005; Todd-Breland, 2018). This makes them pragmatic partners in progressive coalitions, not unconditional ones.

However, due to their relative strength in the labor movement, they are still crucial actors that can provide muscle behind issues that increase the rights of working- and middle-class groups. Those that wish to strengthen progressive coalitions benefit from strategically framing problems in terms of economic elites versus middle and working classes. In turn, those that wish to weaken progressive coalitions benefit from emphasizing key fault lines that separate the interests of white, middle-class workers from those of people of color and working-class groups.

What to Do with the Progressive Coalition Building Perspective

The progressive coalition building perspective and the political economy framework from which it stems provide a new lens to resolve prior puzzles of teachers’ union activity. As noted above, teachers’ unions have been active in recent advocacy efforts for minimum wage increases, healthcare expansion, and immigration issues. The rent-seeking and teacher voice perspectives provide little insight into why teachers’ unions would expend resources on supporting such efforts. However, the PCB perspective highlights the coalitional nature of policy reform efforts that rely on multiple actors, across policy domains in order to achieve political goals and policy wins. With the PCB perspective, it is not surprising that teachers’ unions would be motivated to take on political positions that at face value seem at odds with their members’ immediate financial interests. Teachers’ unions may be required to support such policies in order to maintain long-term relationships with their coalitional partners. Coalitional activities require tactical tradeoffs and comprises, and the PCB view provides new insight into how teachers and their unions exist and attempt to wield power within political and economic systems beyond education. In doing so, this perspective also provides many new avenues for future research and considerations for the practice of teacher organizing.

For one, the PCB perspective generates new testable hypotheses about the effects of teachers’ union strength. Bringing a new emphasis on broader political coalitions, scholars could examine not just how teacher unionization affects students via education specific decision making (e.g., school spending, class size, etc.) but also policies related to students’ broader social and economic well-being (e.g., minimum wage, healthcare, etc.). Recent labor policy changes for teachers’ and other public sector workers at the state and national level provide an opportunity to study this empirically. Questions of interest could include: To what extent does teacher union strength lead to more progressive policies (e.g., higher minimum wages, larger social safety nets, more progressive tax structures)? To what extent has progressive political action driven recent attacks on teacher unionization, and how have these attacks generated policy feedback affecting politics more broadly? Does teacher unionization (or deunionization) affect inequality within states? How do such indirect effects of teacher unionization affect students’ abilities to flourish academically, socially, and emotionally?

Future research could also explore the evolving nature of progressive coalitions. How aligned are the actions of teachers’ unions and other progressive groups? How has this changed over time, particularly in response to changes to labor structures? Quantitative research could, for example, leverage the rich data on campaign contributions from the National Institute for Money in Politics to understand the landscape of political spending from teachers’ unions across the nation and investigate the extent to which contributions from teachers’ unions correlate with other labor and progressive groups. Qualitative research could also consider how progressive coalitions balance the competing priorities of various allies. How has the makeup of formal and informal coalitions around progressive candidates and issues changed over time? When teachers’ unions are involved, what brings other groups to the table? How do coalitional members perceive and experience working with teachers’ unions and other groups? How do coalitional partners navigate power structures, embedded cultures of white supremacy, and the institutional incentives of teachers as interest groups?

Additionally, the progressive coalition building perspective provides a new avenue for research on race and teacher unionization. As noted above, teachers’ unions have a complex history with racial politics, one that intersects with gender and class in important ways. Academic accounts of this history focus heavily on conflicts in the 1960′s (Goldstein, 2014; Perrillo, 2012). Much has changed in both the labor and civil rights movements since then (Todd-Breland, 2018), and unions now have greater incentives to build interracial coalitions than ever before (Warren, 2010). Recent research has also shown that unionization decreases racial resentment among whites (Frymer & Grumbach, 2021), but much more, detailed work is needed on the intersection between racial justice and labor unions, especially within education. Such research has the ability to address the nature of labor coalitions that must confront the intersectional nature of racial, class-based, and gender-based inequality in the United States and globally. What role do teachers’ unions see for themselves in the fight for racial justice, and how has this changed over time? How do leaders of social justice-oriented unions (e.g., CTU and BCTF) and progressive caucuses within more traditional teachers’ unions (e.g., MORE) conceptualize the intersectional nature of inequality? How, if at all, has this changed in recent times? How have teachers and their unions participated in recent Black Lives Matter protests, and what have been the implications for broader coalition building?

Finally, the progressive coalition building perspective highlights several considerations for the practice of teacher organizing. Whether teachers like it or not, educational battles are increasingly moving to larger political arenas, both in terms of the level of influence (local to state and national; Henig et al., 2019) and policy focus (education-specific to general-purpose; Henig, 2013). To remain powerful, unions will need to both monitor and respond to these shifts in new ways that will increasingly require coalitions around a wider agenda of social reform issues. Teachers’ unions must balance their immediate priorities with long-held tensions and distrust of many local communities, particularly in large, urban areas. To the extent that they acknowledge and work toward reconciliation of past conflicts, they may be able to generate stronger alliances with parents and community partners.

Organizational efforts in smaller, more homogenous districts face different challenges, particularly when their membership tends to prefer less progressive policies than state and national unions may be supporting. These unions may end up as the most pragmatic of coalitional partners due to the challenge of justifying any political actions in relation to the immediate self-interest of local teachers. However, to the extent that interests are more homogenous among all residents in such areas, tensions may be more salient across levels of government (local, state, national) than across potential local coalitional partners. Regardless, shifts in the nature of education politics and policymaking provide a new opportunity for unions to reorient themselves and their priorities. It will ultimately be up to the individual local unions whether they choose to take advantage of these opportunities.