My name is Dr. Jake Jobe and I have taught at Park City High School since 2013. I am also an adjunct professor and scholar at the University of Utah in the Education College and the former co-president of the Park City Education Association.
Within that role, I served on the negotiations team during collective bargaining two years ago.
I read Mr. Ioannides’ column regarding H.B. 267, and while I take issue with various perspectives offered in that column, I want to specifically point out flaws in his argument about collective bargaining, teacher unions, and their correlation to student achievement.
Mr. Ioannides uses research from Jason Baron, then at the University of Michigan, to support a positive view of H.B. 267 using data from Wisconsin. Mr. Ioannides wrote: “A Wisconsin study looked at the impact of Act 10, a similar 2011 law that was expected to decimate teachers’ unions. Researcher Jason Baron compared trends in teaching degrees earned in Wisconsin post-Act 10 to trends in neighboring states that maintained stronger union protections. The result? A 20% increase in the share of college students pursuing teaching degrees in Wisconsin.”
This is a misleading claim as it neglects the context and struggles of the Wisconsin education system. Per the Wisconsin Office of Public Instruction, teacher salaries have decreased almost 20 percent from 2012 to 2024 and teachers are leaving the state “at an alarming rate.”
The same researcher cited by Mr. Ioannides, Jason Baron, found in a separate paper titled “The Effect of Teachers’ Unions on Student Achievement: Evidence from Wisconsin’s Act 10” that Act 10 is likely connected with decreases in Wisconsin student achievement — on average, 20% below the standard deviation.
The achievement loss was most pronounced in the lowest performing schools and among the lowest performing students, and specifically driven by achievement loss in math and science.
Importantly, Baron argues the learning loss across the state can likely be attached to two teacher workforce problems — decreasing salaries and greater teacher turnover — both of which he links to the passage of Act 10.
While achievement data is impacted by a variety of social, economic and political factors, it seems clear Act 10 did not improve student outcomes or teacher experiences in Wisconsin.
Baron further cautions in his paper, as any strong scholar would, that policy makers should be careful to generalize his research across other states and contexts, given the regional differences with education policy and procedures.
All of this negates other local context left out by Mr. Ioannides: Park City has the best teacher compensation in the state, and that compensation package can largely be attributed to positive, interest-based collective bargaining practices and a constructive relationship between the Park City Education Association and the Park City Board of Education.
Collective bargaining has made our teacher workforce in Park City stronger by encouraging teachers to stay in Park City for better compensation, limiting teacher turnover and ensuring strong academic achievement for our students, literally the opposite of the Wisconsin model.
H.B. 267 is bad for students, bad for teachers, and bad for communities. This is not an issue of misleading headlines, as Mr. Ioannides argues, but rather the reality of this new law and its impact on our local school district and education in Utah.
Jake Jobe
Salt Lake City