Eberts Randall W
W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Future Child. 2007 Spring;17(1):175-200. doi: 10.1353/foc.2007.0001.
Randall Eberts explores the role of teachers unions in public education. He focuses particularly on how collective bargaining agreements shape the delivery of educational services, how unions affect both student achievement and the cost of providing quality education, and how they support educational reform efforts. Eberts's synthesis of the empirical research concludes that union bargaining raises teachers' compensation, improves their working conditions, and enhances their employment security-while also raising the cost of providing public education by upwards of 15 percent. The effect of unions on student performance is mixed. Students of average ability who attend school in union districts perform better on standardized tests, whereas low-achieving and high-achieving students perform worse. However, the overall gain in achievement does not make up for the higher cost. Of late, unions have begun to be more supportive of school reform, moving from an adversarial bargaining model to a more collaborative one in which teachers and administrators share common goals and hold joint responsibility. Yet unions' desire to participate in reform does not match their fervor to organize in the 1960s and 1970s. While national union leadership has talked about reform, local affiliates have initiated most of the reform efforts, pioneering reforms such as accountability and incentive pay. In Eberts's view, one reason that unions have been slow to embrace reform efforts is the lack of consensus on their effectiveness. He argues that many reforms have been too narrowly focused; rather, effective schools result from well-designed systems and processes. In principle, adopting standards that help teachers focus on lessons they want students to learn, aligning their teaching to the lessons, and devising measurements that demonstrate that students are responding to these lessons can improve teaching as long as the public, policymakers, and school administrators acknowledge the complexity of the learning process and the broad outcomes that society desires.
兰德尔·埃伯茨探讨了教师工会在公共教育中的作用。他特别关注集体谈判协议如何塑造教育服务的提供，工会如何影响学生成绩以及提供优质教育的成本，以及工会如何支持教育改革努力。埃伯茨对实证研究的综合分析得出结论，工会谈判提高了教师薪酬，改善了他们的工作条件，增强了他们的就业保障，同时也使提供公共教育的成本提高了15%以上。工会对学生成绩的影响喜忧参半。在工会地区上学的中等能力学生在标准化考试中表现更好，而成绩差和成绩好的学生表现更差。然而，成绩方面的总体提升并不能弥补更高的成本。近年来，工会开始更支持学校改革，从对抗性谈判模式转向更具合作性的模式，即教师和管理人员有共同目标并承担共同责任。然而，工会参与改革的意愿与他们在20世纪60年代和70年代组织起来的热情并不匹配。虽然全国工会领导层谈论改革，但大多数改革努力是由地方分支机构发起的，开创了诸如问责制和激励薪酬等改革。在埃伯茨看来，工会迟迟不接受改革努力的一个原因是对改革成效缺乏共识。他认为许多改革过于狭隘地聚焦；相反，有效的学校源于精心设计的系统和流程。原则上，只要公众、政策制定者和学校管理人员认识到学习过程的复杂性以及社会所期望的广泛成果，采用有助于教师专注于他们希望学生学习的课程、使教学与课程保持一致并设计出能证明学生对这些课程有反应的衡量标准，就能改善教学。
