About

A Research and Public Policy Dialogue Project

The Bargaining for Better Schools (BBS) project is a multi-year research and public policy project on the state of labor-management relations in New York State schools. Our goal is to provide multiple forums for dialogue and learning among school administration and union leaders, concerned citizens and policy makers,supported with accurate and up-to-date information and data on the relationships between employment practices and school improvement.

Education policy is undergoing enormous change across the country, fueled in part by an increasingly fractious public debate on education employment practices, including the role of teacher unions and collective bargaining in creating or changing teacher hiring, firing, and pay procedures. There is little systematic information on the state of labor and employment relations in public schools available to the public, policy makers, and school administration and union leaders to inform dialogue and decision-making on these consequential issues.Are unions and collective bargaining an impediment to school improvement, or part of the solution? Will changes in teacher evaluation and compensation systems have any effect on student success? Can the brand new contracts in unionized charter schools chart a new kind of labor-management relationship between teachers and administrators?

The ILR School has a long track record of bringing together labor, management, policy makers, and community stakeholders for shared learning and informed decision-making in industries and sectors undergoing consequential change. ILR's research and outreach divisions combined have the largest collection of experts in the country devoted to evaluating and disseminating best practices in collective bargaining, conflict resolution, labor and employment relations, compensation and performance evaluation, labor force economics, and other related areas.

We are committed to bringing this expertise to support meaningful improvement in public education employment practices, and to preparing our undergraduate and graduate students to be engaged as future teachers, administrators, labor leaders, school board members, policy makers, and citizens in shaping education reform.