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Teachers’ unions and excellence in education: Comment

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Abstract

In a recent article in this journal, Michael Kurth presented what he considered evidence that teachers’ unions impair educational achievement and that what they must do to increase teachers’ salaries is harmful to educational excellence. This comment critically examines Kurth’s misspecified model and the misleadingly defined variables that led to the erroneous empirical support for his conclusion. Our own estimates indicate that states with a high level of collective bargaining had higher SAT scores in 1982.

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References

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Nelson, F.H., Gould, J.C. Teachers’ unions and excellence in education: Comment. Journal of Labor Research 9, 379–387 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685471

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