Teacher Strikes Lead to Higher Pay, Lower Class Sizes, More State Funds

A first-of-its-kind study has found that teachers' strikes lead to increased teachers' pay. And, not only that, strikes also cause additional per-pupil spending, lower class sizes, and more investment in non-teaching employees, like nurses and social worker.

Or, as Vox puts it, "U.S. teacher strikes were good, actually."

Figuring this out was an enormous task for researchers, who took nearly four years to comb through about 90,000 news articles-"which does sound insane when you say it," acknowledges lead author Melissa Arnold Lyon-and assemble a novel database of 772 teacher strikes in 27 states between 2007-2008 and 2022-2023. Last month, the research team published their analysis of this data in a paper produced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, entitled, "The Causes and Consequences of U.S. Teacher Strikes."

Their chief findings include:

* Strikes increased compensation by 8 percent, or roughly $10,000 per teacher per year, by the fifth year after a strike.

* Strikes also improved working conditions, with student-teacher ratios decreasing by 0.5, on average, or 3.2 percent. They also caused an approximate 7 percent increase in spending on non-instructional staff, like social workers, nurses, etc.

* These improvements to salaries and working conditions came from new money to districts from states, rather than the reallocation of existing district funds.

* There are "no sizable positive or negative effects on student achievement," the study's authors note.

Today, teacher strikes are illegal in 37 states, but the study's authors point out that a strong majority of the U.S. public supports the rights of teachers to strike, and it's common to see parents, students, and community members on educators' picket lines. (Specifically, 78 percent of parents and 73 percent of the overall public said they would support teachers if they go on strike in their community, according to a PDK poll.) Labor protest is a form of speech-recently, the chief negotiator of the St. Paul Federation of Educators called it "the cry of the unheard." For these reasons, NEA and its affiliates are working to make sure all educators can exercise this right.

Using the new dataset, the research team first examined the key issues in every one of their 772 strikes.

Did teachers strike over wages? Or were they fed up with working conditions, like too-big class sizes or a lack of social workers, nurses, and other non-teaching staff? Or were they making a stand about "common good" issues, like affordable housing, racial justice, climate change, or something else?

In nine out of 10 strikes (89 percent), teacher pay was a key issue, researchers found. They also found that striking worked. "It is a fact that teacher strikes are increasing teacher salaries," says Lyon, a NEA Higher Ed member and assistant professor of public policy at the University of Albany.

"Specifically, we find that strikes cause average compensation to increase by 3% ($2,000 per teacher) in the year after a strike. Compensation then continues to increase in the following years, reaching an increase of roughly 8% ($10,000 per teacher) in the fifth year after a strike," the study's authors wrote.

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