What roles do teachers’ organizations have with respect to educational policy? The answers depend on what one’s understanding of educational policy is. If what is meant by “policy” is decisions made by governments or their designated decision makers and codifi ed in legislation or contractual language, then in many countries teachers and their representative organizations have no formal policy role, or a carefully delimited role with respect to negotiating “industrial” or “labor” factors such as teacher compensation, benefi ts, and working conditions. When they think about them at all, most educational policy analysts and policy makers understand teachers’ organizations only in relation to formal, system-level decision-making arenas and specifi cally with respect to issues of current interest at any given time. And when they think about them at all, policy researchers are often critical: A review of the research conducted over a decade ago concluded that, “Regardless of where they stand, one thing unites the few researchers who actually study unions and the many commentators who have an opinion on them: Everyone wants them to change” (Bradley, 1996). The same holds today.