Teacher Union Influence on Local School Board Elections

During the past decade there has been a concerted effort by teacher unions in this country to gain political power. This effort has not been limited to the arena of partisan politics at the state and national levels. There have also been attempts at the local level to gain political influence over boards of education. The purpose of this study was to determine if the political action efforts of a local teacher association resulted in the election of the union\u27s endorsed candidates to the board of education. In order to make this determination, this study examines five board of education elections from 1975-1978 in Charleston, Illinois. During this time, the Charleston Education Association (CEA) endorsed 14 candidates to serve on the seven-member Charleston Board of Education. Eleven of these endorsed candidates were elected. The perceptions of teachers, unsuccessful school board candidates, present school board members and citizen consulting council members were used to determine if these groups believed the CEA had an impact on the outcome of the elections under study. A nine-item instrument was developed for the purpose of surveying the four groups involved in the study. The instrument employed a Likert-type scale with assigned values for each response. A one-way analysis of variance was used as the statistical model to determine if there was a significant difference between the four group mean responses. One-way analysis of variance was applied to all nine statements of the survey. In addition, the Duncan\u27s New Multiple Range Test was applied to determine if the group means differed significantly at the .05 level. The following conclusions are based on the findings as analyzed by this study: Unsuccessful school board candidates did not agree that the CEA should endorse school board candidates. Present school board members and teachers agreed that CEA endorsements should be made public. None of the groups surveyed believed that the CEA should make financial contributions to school board candidates. Unsuccessful school board candidates did not believe the CEA should work on behalf of school board candidates nor contribute financially to their campaigns. Unsuccessful school board candidates hinted that the CEA controls school board decisions. Unsuccessful school board candidates believed that the CEA is the strongest political force in school board elections. Only teachers believed that collective bargaining has improved the quality of education in Charleston. Only teachers believed that the CEA has the welfare of students as one of its top priorities. The findings of the study paralleled the election results. The four groups perceived that the CEA political action efforts led to the election of school board candidates