“Thus far, the leading writers of the current school reform movement have shirked from a critical examination of teachers’ unions and collective bargaining,” wrote Todd A. DeMitchell and Richard Fossey in their 1997 book The Limits of Law-Based School Reform. “With very few exceptions, one will search in vain in the school reform literature for even the appearance of the word union.”

The Pacific Research Institute’s Center for School Reform takes the bull by the horns with this report, examining every gory detail of the documents that are the ultimate arbiter of so much of the daily doings of our public schools – the collective bargaining agreements. In the last 25 years in California, there probably has not been a single significant action undertaken in a public school district without someone first asking the question: “Does the contract allow it?” Yet collective bargaining agreements are among the least studied of all aspects of public education. Indeed, the authors’ own experience illustrates how difficult it is just to get copies of these contracts, despite the explicit language and intent of the state’s public records laws.

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