ABSTRACT
Politics, teachers, and their unions go together in ways that few could have predicted 40 years ago when public school teachers-as one of the nation’s largest public employee groups-gained state-level rights to unionize and to bargain collectively (Cooper, 1982; Kerchner, Koppich, & Weeres, 1997; Lieberman, 1997; Loveless, 2000; Porgursky, 2003). Today, teachers’ unions negotiate with school boards for their members’ salaries, benefi ts, and conditions of employment in all but 12 states (or bargain, as in the case of Hawaii, with the state board of education since Hawaii has no local school districts or school boards).
