Benchmarking public school performance by unionized status
Document Type
Article
Department or Administrative Unit
Finance and Supply Chain Management
Publication Date
10-3-2016
Abstract
Purpose
There are elevated debates on the role of teacher unions on the effectiveness of education in the USA. The purpose of this paper is to examine if the unionization of education has an impact on the comparative performance of public education in the USA.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors classify states into two groups such as highly unionized states and less unionized states for comparing their performance differences. The analyses consist of two stages. First, the authors apply data envelopment analysis (DEA) to the key performance indicators of the groups. Next, the authors use statistical analysis for confirming the statistical significance of the performance differences that may exist between two groups.
Findings
The authors have confirmed the adverse impact of unionization on public education using DEA models and non-parametric rank-sum tests. However, the authors are cautious for generalizing the finding due to the limitations described in the research limitation section.
Research limitations/implications
The finding is limited within the selection of the variables and model specification and requires additional studies using different variables and models. The authors hope that the study motivates researchers to conduct further studies in this area.
Originality/value
Major contributions of the study include a novel approach for measuring the performance of primary and secondary schools at the state level by classifying and choosing less or highly unionized states and suggesting insights for improvements.
Recommended Citation
Overton, K., Joo, S. J., & Stoeberl, P. A. (2016). Benchmarking public school performance by unionized status. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 23(7), 1626–1642. https://doi.org/10.1108/bij-08-2014-0080
Journal
Benchmarking: An International Journal
Rights
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Comments
This article was originally published in Benchmarking: An International Journal. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.
Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.