The Backlash Against School Choice and Accountability Policies: The Organizations and Their Politics

The Policy Agenda

In one of the most widely taught books on the politics of public policy—Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies—John Kingdon explains that for an issue to remain firmly on a government’s decision agenda, there must be concrete policy alternatives available, by which he means alternatives that have been formulated, vetted, and ideally tested by the relevant policy communities. Even if key actors recognize that there is a real problem to be addressed, and even if the political environment is conducive to solving that problem, little will actually happen unless policy communities have settled on feasible policy alternatives for addressing that problem (Kingdon 2010).

Hillary Clinton made this very point during a tense exchange with Black Lives Matter activist Julius Jones in 2015. Jones asked Clinton “what in [her] heart [had] changed” since she supported the crime bill of her husband’s administration—a policy that many point to as a contributor to the stunning rise in incarceration rates since the 1990s. In her response, Clinton said, “I don’t believe you change hearts . . . I believe you change laws, you change the allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.” And she urged Jones (and the Black Lives Matter movement) to come up with a concrete “vision and plan,” noting that “in politics, if you can’t explain it and you can’t sell it, it stays on the shelf.” Without a set of specific policy proposals, she lamented, “we’ll be back here in 10 years having the same conversation” (Haberman 2015).

Neither Kingdon nor Clinton are talking about education policy specifically, but the message is nonetheless relevant for what I am referring to here as the backlash movement. The problems in American education are real, and observers of all ideological stripes acknowledge that. Consider that scores on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that only 40% of fourth-graders and 33% of eighth-graders perform at or above the “proficient” level in math. Those figures are even lower for minority students: Among Black students, for example, only 19% of fourth-graders and 13% of eight-graders are proficient in math. Little more than a third of students are considered proficient in reading in fourth and eighth grades, again with the figures lower for Black and Hispanic students (NCES, n.d.). And over the last three decades, gains in student achievement have been modest (NCES 2013).

In their book, Ferman and coauthors lament the racial- and income-based disparities in education quality, resources, and student achievement in the United States, and they also acknowledge the structural factors that contribute to that inequity. What does not come across clearly, however, is an articulation of the specific policies that backlash groups propose to address those problems. The book’s contributors referred to an “alternative vision for public education” (e.g., p. 65), but aside from general mentions of community schools, local control, and equitable funding (which, as policy proposals, are vague), the backlash movement mainly seems united by its opposition to choice and test-based accountability policies—not by an alternative set of policies that could credibly produce improvements over the status quo. The authors acknowledged this, noting that “what is missing is an overarching framework” (p. 139). But this lack of a clear, positive policy agenda stands to be a problem for the backlash movement going forward, for two main reasons.

First, movements without concrete policy proposals usually do not last long and do not result in meaningful change. Without a policy agenda, there is no policy success, and without policy success, there are no wins for the movement to rally behind. In the short run, perhaps opposition to choice and test-based accountability reforms is enough to unite and motivate the backlash movement. But as long as it remains purely or mainly an opposition movement focused on blocking reforms, the underlying problems of public education will not be addressed, and there is little reason to expect that education reformers will simply pack up and go home. Public education is simply too important to too many people. And so long as these problems persist, reformers will continue to crop up and push their ideas for how to improve the system, and as Clinton said, “we’ll be back here in 10 years having the same conversation” (Haberman 2015).

Second, the absence of a positive policy agenda is problematic for the backlash movement because its opponents—choice and accountability reformers—do have a positive policy agenda. Two people who completely disagree about what the reformers’ motives are, or whether their proposals will improve student outcomes, can easily agree that education reformers come to political battles armed with specific policies they want to get enacted. The education reform community has been developing, debating, and honing these ideas for decades. They are ready to push these policies when an opportune moment arrives, and that is not likely to change for as long as problems persist in public education.

Up against this well-developed policy effort, the grassroots organizations described in Ferman’s book look merely reactive, and they remain vulnerable to accusations that they are really just interested in protecting the status quo—a status quo that so many consider inadequate. Chap. 4, for example, is about the “opt-out” movement in the Philadelphia area—a movement that is all about opposition to standardized testing. In chap. 5, where the focus is an organization called Save Our Schools NJ (New Jersey), the goals of the organization are described as (1) increasing school funding, (2) opposing vouchers, (3) limiting and constraining charter schools, and (4) opposing standardized testing. The reader is left to wonder what the alternative policy agenda is, or whether the overarching goal of this movement is simply to throw more money at the status quo. Perhaps a more charitable take on backlash groups is that their leaders really do care about improving public education but just have not yet settled on a policy agenda for pursuing those ends. One could say that these are the early days of the movement and that it will eventually converge on policy alternatives for improving public education. But here, too, two people need not agree on the true motives of backlash groups to agree that as of now, they have not nailed down the specifics of their alternative vision. And that lack of a clear policy agenda stands to be an impediment to their organizational and political success.

Coalitional Challenges

The backlash movement also confronts some challenges related to its organizational structure and the incentives of the groups in its coalition. Two particular features of this structure, and the problems associated with them, are important to highlight: First, teacher unions are by far the best organized and best resourced organizations in the backlash movement, and yet without some fundamental changes in their incentive structure, the unions are unlikely to do what the authors of this book advise them to do—namely, abandon the old model of “business unionism” in favor of a more collaborative model of “social justice unionism.” Second, beyond the teacher unions, the other potential backlash groups (such as grassroots organizations of parents) face daunting collective action problems, and those problems may well get in the way of any successful and sustained organizing.

Let us begin with the teacher unions. Ferman and coauthors do acknowledge the central role that teacher unions play in the fight against choice and test-based accountability reforms, but they also severely understate their political importance and influence. Consider, for example, Ferman and Palazzolo’s (2017, p. 26) assessment that “actors with a constituency base,” such as teachers, “must engage in the slow-moving process of . . . vying for a seat at the decision-making table.” This misses the mark by a wide margin. In districts with mandatory collective bargaining, teacher unions automatically get a place at the table: District officials are required to negotiate and reach agreement with teacher unions on salaries, benefits, and work rules. They also wrote that “the proponents of market-based reforms have significantly more money than those who challenge that agenda” (p. 22). But they neglect to mention the campaign contributions of teacher unions, even though teacher unions are consistently among the top contributors of all kinds to state and federal campaigns (Moe 2011). ² Teacher unions are also focused almost exclusively on education, whereas for businesses and billionaire philanthropists, education policy is one of many policy arenas they might try to influence. Besides, political power comes in many forms—not just money. The National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have more than four million members spread out across the United States. They vote, they mobilize and persuade voters, they endorse candidates, and they lobby elected officials. Any account of the backlash movement—and of education politics in general—needs to take them seriously, because they are by far the strongest, best-resourced organizations aligned against choice and test-based accountability reforms.

What, then, can we expect of teacher unions going forward? How should we expect them to use their political strength? In The Fight for America’s Schools, Ferman and coauthors put forward a vision in which the teacher unions become true partners of other groups in the backlash movement, and work side by side with them to promote education quality through alternatives to choice and test-based accountability reforms. In particular, they advised teacher unions to move away from the traditional model of “business unionism,” whereby “union power lies with the union officers’ ability to negotiate and win concessions from management” and “the union provides services, benefits, and pension advice; negotiates contracts; files grievances; and engages in electoral politics” (p. 20). Instead, Ferman and coauthors argued, teacher unions should adopt the alternative model of “social justice unionism,” in which the union “works in alliance with other movements for social justice, peace, and equity,” and becomes a “more inclusive organization that focuses on education quality issues” (pp. 20–21).

That certainly sounds nice. But barring a fundamental restructuring of teacher unions’ incentives, there is little reason to expect that teacher unions will do this. In his book Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools, particularly the chapter on what he calls “Reform Unionism,” Terry Moe (2011) explains why: Teacher union leaders are, after all, elected officials. Just like members of Congress, they have to be focused on pleasing their constituents: teachers. And in a survey of more than 3,000 teachers across the United States, Moe finds that the vast majority of them—84%—are highly satisfied with what their union locals do for them through collective bargaining (Moe 2011). ³ Given that teachers are overwhelmingly happy with their local unions’ efforts in collective bargaining—and that a significantly smaller share of teachers (66%) report being happy with what teacher unions do in state and national politics—teacher union leaders cannot be expected to abandon the “business unionism” priorities of delivering better salaries, benefits, and working conditions for teachers. Those are the most popular aspects of what they do among the union members who elect them.

This is not to say that teacher unions will never support reforms, or that they will never collaborate with organizations dedicated to improving education quality. Of course there are examples of teacher unions doing these things. But it is important to keep in mind the context in which they happen. When the political pressure is sufficiently intense, union leaders may have to make concessions and agree to changes that do not align with teachers’ occupational interests. And when teachers’ interests come under attack from reform-minded mayors, superintendents, or state officials, it makes sense that they would collaborate with other organizations that have a shared interest in blocking the proposed changes. But absent this kind of political pressure, it is unrealistic to expect teacher unions across the country to voluntarily give up their focus on teachers’ core interests and instead become organizations devoted first and foremost to education quality and social justice. As Moe wrote, the “fatal flaw” in the logic of social justice unionism “is that it assumes union leaders can be persuaded to ignore, or to give short shrift to, the bedrock occupational interests on which their organizations are based.” He wrote, “Union leaders are never going to do that. If they did, they wouldn’t be leaders very long” (Moe 2011, p. 244).

At best, then, grassroots organizations dedicated to education quality may sometimes find willing allies in teacher unions, but only under certain conditions. When the goal is to fend off efforts to impose choice and test-based accountability reforms, teacher unions can be expected to lend their support. And when teacher unions are operating in a hostile environment, they may be willing to partner with other organizations to broaden their coalition and extend their credibility. As a general rule, however, when groups form a coalition, they have to compromise a bit: The policy goals of the groups in the coalition do not overlap perfectly, and so each group has to give up some of its policy priorities so that the coalition can function as a team. Oftentimes, it makes sense for groups to make that sacrifice, because most groups do not have enough clout to enact policy change on their own (Bawn et al. 2012). But if the group is a powerful one and can enact its most preferred policies working alone, there is less reason to expect it to form coalitions with other groups. Teacher unions, then, may or may not join forces with other groups—it is a matter of strategy (Anzia and Meeks 2016). And the twist here is that the strongest organizations in the backlash movement—teacher unions—can only be expected to collaborate with other groups in the movement when their goals are aligned or when the unions are in a relatively weak position.

That said, with the decision in the U.S. Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME, the position of teacher unions has been weakened. That case decided the fate of agency fees (sometimes called “fair share fees”), which are fees that an employee can be required to contribute to a union even when the employee decides not to join. Mark Janus, a government employee in Illinois, argued that requiring him to pay agency fees to a union is a violation of his free speech, because in the government sector, virtually everything unions do is political in nature. On the other side, unions and labor advocates argued that agency fees are necessary to prevent free-riding: Unions are required to negotiate on behalf of all employees in the bargaining unit, and so an employee who does not have to pay agency fees could simply not join the union and still reap the benefits of the union’s efforts in collective bargaining. In June 2018, the Court decided in favor of the plaintiff, which means that public-sector unions can no longer require nonmembers to pay agency fees. Experts debate how large the effects of this decision will be (see Chen 2018; DiSalvo 2018a, 2018b), but there is widespread agreement that the unions will lose revenue and dues-paying members as a result.

To see this, we need only look at variation in teacher union membership across the United States today. In states such as South Carolina and Mississippi, teacher unions are relatively weak: The union membership rate of public school teachers hovers around 30%. But in states such as California and Illinois, almost 100% of K-12 public school teachers are in unions, and the teacher unions are a formidable force in state and local politics. Most of this has to do with the states’ collective bargaining laws for teachers: Teacher union membership is much higher in states that require collective bargaining for teachers (which most do) than in states that prohibit it (such as South Carolina and Mississippi). But teacher union membership also tends to be higher in states that previously allowed agency fees. New Jersey and Pennsylvania, for example, require collective bargaining and allowed agency fees prior to the Janus decision, and nearly all of their K-12 public school teachers are members of unions. But in Nevada and North Dakota, which require collective bargaining but previously banned agency fees, teacher union membership rates are lower—around 70% (Moe 2011). Based on this pattern, it seems likely that the Supreme Court decision banning agency fees for governments nationwide will deal a blow to the organizational strength and finances of public-sector labor, including teachers.

It is possible that in this new environment, Ferman and coauthors’ hopes for more collaborative teacher unions will be realized: Perhaps in their weakened state, teacher unions will need long-term coalition partners to be politically effective. But it is also possible that teacher unions will focus even more intensely on the core issues of compensation and work rules in the post-Janus world. After all, those are the union efforts that their members are happiest with, and so in an environment where unions have to do more to entice people to join, perhaps they will double down on their focus on teachers’ core interests.

It is too soon to say for sure whether teacher unions will become more collaborative and social justice-oriented as a result of the ban on agency fees. The ideas I have put forward here are just ideas. But in thinking about the future and in refining our expectations about what will become of the backlash movement, it is critical to recognize teacher unions as pivotal players. In most places, most of the time, they have been the political force to be reckoned with in education politics. In recent years, as reform efforts have gained momentum and the political environment has become more hostile to them, teacher unions have had to make some concessions and collaborate with other groups. But absent some fundamental change in their incentives, which may or may not have arrived with the decision in Janus v. AFSCME, we should not expect them to voluntarily transform into organizations that prioritize education reform over the occupational interests of their members.

Of course, even if teacher unions are the most important groups in the backlash movement, they are not the only ones. Ferman and coauthors describe an array of groups that have pushed back against choice and test-based accountability reforms in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, oftentimes quite successfully. The problem, however, is that most groups other than school employee organizations either face substantial collective action problems or only focus on education issues some of the time. Most parents, for example, only have so much time to devote to local political organizing and activism; oftentimes, parent groups form in reaction to a particular event but then lose momentum and disband when the moment has passed. Groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are strong as organizations but only sometimes get involved in education politics and policy; they have many other policy priorities and are presumably selective about which education battles they engage in. Teacher unions, by contrast, are focused almost exclusively on education, have lasting and long-term interests in education policy, and in most states have overcome their collective action problems (Moe 2011). Even though the decision in Janus v. AFSCME will change how unions operate going forward, thinking about the backlash movement and its potential for the future requires us to recognize the organizational and political imbalances among the groups in that movement, and to consider how those imbalances will shape the movement’s policy agenda, strategy, and success.

Conclusion

The Fight for America’s Schools breaks new ground in detailing the efforts, successes, and failures of various groups opposed to choice and test-based accountability reforms. From the cases in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we learn a great deal about how parents and students in certain communities have organized to fight these reforms, and about why certain efforts fizzled before they could produce results. Using the book as a jumping-off point for thinking about the current state and the future of education politics, I have made three main points. The first is that the fundamentals of education politics actually have not really changed in recent years. As Chubb and Moe (1990) explained almost 30 years ago, as long as public education is governed democratically, education politics will always be a struggle among constituencies with different views of what public education should be. The balance of power among those constituencies has shifted in recent years as reform efforts have gained momentum, but even now, it is important not to overstate the reformers’ success. Yes, the choice and test-based accountability movement has gained traction, but its actual policy reach remains limited—largely because of the formidable political opposition it has faced.

My second and third points have been about that political opposition—about the groups that I have referred to as “backlash groups.” I see two main challenges for the backlash movement going forward. First, the potential of the backlash movement stands to be limited by its current lack of specific, viable, and scalable policies—an answer to the choice and accountability movement’s call for reform. If not charter schools, vouchers, and merit pay, then what policies should we pursue to lift student achievement and reduce achievement gaps? As it stands, the backlash movement does not appear to have realistic, well-developed answers, and instead, it remains united by opposition to proposed reforms. A second (and related) challenge is that by far, the best-organized and most consistent groups in the backlash movement are teacher unions. Other groups are less consistent in their involvement in education politics, or they confront formidable collective action problems. And yet, teacher unions can really only be expected to join forces with these other groups when doing so does not threaten teachers’ core interests or when the unions are operating from a position of weakness. Going forward, navigating these organizational tensions and imbalances will be a key challenge for the groups and individuals opposed to the school choice and test-based accountability movement.