Teacher Strikes, Student Outcomes, and Educational Change in Large Urban School Districts

Abstract

This thesis examines whether teacher strikes in large urban school districts are associated with measurable changes in student outcomes and what those labor conflicts reveal about educational change and teacher advocacy in public education. Focusing on large cities in the United States from 2009 to 2019, it examines whether teacher strikes are associated with changes in 8th-grade reading, 8th-grade math, and high school graduation rates. It explores how teachers pursue institutional change under different governing conditions. This project frames teacher strikes not as disruptions to instructional time but as policy conflicts shaped by bargaining power, district governance, and school conditions, challenging prevailing opinions on the subject. The main finding is that teacher strikes do not appear to produce a large, uniform average change in student outcomes across these large urban school districts. Baseline panel estimates are small and statistically imprecise across the three outcomes. The reading scores estimate is essentially zero, the math scores estimate is small and positive, and the graduation estimate is positive but imprecise. To deepen the study, individual case studies of Chicago and Philadelphia were analyzed. These cases suggest that labor conflict can reshape bargaining agendas and school conditions. This thesis concludes that teacher strikes in the United States are best understood as highly context-dependent situations in which education policy spans numerous inputs and outputs. Future policy must not seek blanket strike suppression, but should instead focus on earlier, more substantive bargaining, along with better recovery planning for when teacher strikes do occur.