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The resurgence and impacts of teacher strikes [1]

['J. Cameron Anglum', 'Anita Manion', 'Sapna Varkey', 'Jing Liu', 'Cameron Conrad', 'David Blazar', 'Danielle Edwards', 'Matthew A. Kraft', 'Kristin F. Butcher', 'Elizabeth Kepner']

Date: 2025-03

Sections Print

In 1981, President Reagan’s decision to fire striking air traffic controllers seemed to mark the death knell for labor actions in the United States. Union membership has plummeted by over 60% since 1970, and worker participation in strikes has seen an even more dramatic 90% drop. For decades, strikes have seemed to be like vinyl records—relics of the past. Perhaps they evoke a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era, romanticized and somewhat symbolic for those who remember them fondly, but they have been perceived as ineffective tools in the modern landscape. Yet, like the vinyl record, recent years have seen a surprising resurgence in teacher strikes. From Wisconsin in 2011 to the nationwide “RedForEd” movement in 2018, educators have taken to the picket lines with renewed vigor, seeming to garner public support and win significant concessions. This unexpected revival prompted my colleagues Matthew Kraft (Brown University), Matthew Steinberg (Accelerate), and me to investigate the prevalence, causes, and impacts of teacher strikes in the 21st century. Uncovering data Our first challenge was a lack of comprehensive data. Since 1982, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has only collected data on strikes involving 1,000 or more employees. This means they are missing a lot of teacher strikes, as 97% of school districts employ fewer than 1,000 teachers. To fill this gap, we created a novel dataset by systematically searching for and reviewing approximately 90,000 news articles, a process that we validated with administrative data from two states. This painstaking process allowed us to document 772 U.S. teacher strikes from 2007 to 2023, providing the most comprehensive dataset on teacher strikes in recent history. The landscape of modern teacher strikes Our research reveals a complex landscape of teacher strikes across the United States. Figure 1 visualizes the distribution of strikes geographically. We count any public school district that had to cancel at least one day of school as a separate striking district. This means we include legal, illegal, coordinated, and individual strikes, as well as “wildcat” strikes, “walk-outs,” or “sick-outs” that lead to school closures. When strikes are coordinated across districts, we conceptualize those as multiple strikes based on the number of districts cancelling classes.

Figure 1

The impact of these actions has been substantial, affecting roughly 11.5 million students and leading to the cancellation of 3,403 school days (or 48 million student days) over 16 years. Nationally, the median number of strikes per year is 12.5, resulting in an average of 89 days of canceled school annually. Most strikes are brief, with 65% ending in five days or less and a median duration of two days. The longest strike lasted 34.5 days. Surprisingly, 75% of the strikes we identified occurred in states where teacher strikes are illegal. This reflects the old labor maxim, “there is no such thing as an illegal strike, only an unsuccessful one.” Why do strikes occur? Understanding why teachers strike is crucial to grasping the broader implications of these actions. From our search process, we tracked the reported reasons for strikes from 2007 to 2023. Teacher compensation emerged as the primary driver, cited in 89% of strikes. This encompasses both salaries and benefits, reflecting ongoing concerns about educator pay across the country. Working conditions were another significant factor, mentioned in 59% of strikes. This category includes issues such as class sizes and general school expenditures (48%), non-instructional staff (16%), and labor rights (10%). Interestingly, 10% of strikes, particularly those occurring in 2018 or later, included “common good” demands, such as addressing housing or immigration issues. This trend suggests a broadening of teacher unions’ advocacy beyond traditional workplace concerns, positioning educators as advocates for wider community issues. The political and economic impacts of teacher strikes With teachers, and likely other public sector workers, strikes are more than just a negotiation tool in a dual-actor collective bargaining process. In the first peer-reviewed paper to come from this research, Matthew Kraft and I conceptualize teacher strikes as something fundamentally different from private sector strikes. In addition to their use in collective bargaining negotiations, strikes also serve as public signals in a contested policy arena, communicating to both the public and political leaders the need for educational change. To test this idea, we look at both the political and economic effects of teacher strikes. Using a “difference-in-differences” approach that accounts for the non-random timing and location of strikes, we estimate the causal effect of teacher strikes by comparing trends in striking districts to what we would have expected based on trends in non-striking districts. What we find is striking (pardon the pun): Teacher strikes lead to a 130% increase in education-focused political advertising, resulting in education ads representing 11% of all campaign ads in the area where the strike occurred. Effects are largest in the period closest to an election, when ads matter the most. Effects are also larger for the first strike in a given area—subsequent strikes in the same district seem to provide weaker signals to political leaders. Further, in a separate working paper with collaborators Leslie Finger (University of North Texas) and Hyesang Noh (University at Albany), we find that strikes don’t just affect campaigns, they reverberate into election outcomes. Teacher strikes reduce voter turnout among Republicans and decrease the Republican vote share in subsequent general elections in surrounding areas. These political effects also translate into tangible economic outcomes. In a new NBER working paper, we show that teacher strikes have real impacts on educators and classrooms. As illustrated in Figure 2, strikes increase annual teacher compensation by about $10,000 (inflation-adjusted to 2018 dollars, or roughly eight percent of the average teacher’s earnings), an effect that is sustained over time. Working conditions see improvements too, with class sizes decreasing by half a student on average, and expenditures on non-instructional staff compensation increasing by about seven percent. Importantly, they do this via new revenues (e.g. via increased taxes) and expenditures, not reallocations of existing funds. Strikes lead to ~$1,000 per pupil increases, increases that are sustained at least eight years post-strike.

Figure 2

Author Melissa Arnold Lyon Assistant Professor - Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany @MimiArnoldLyon

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[1] Url: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-resurgence-and-impacts-of-teacher-strikes/

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