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Teachers Pay and Students' Performance on Standardized Tests

Why do you think that teachers unions object to linking teachers pay to their students performance on standardized test.

Why is building public support so important a part of labor negotiations for public-sector jobs.

This is strictly an opinion based question and is based on the case being built around Governor Schwarzenegger's attempt to change the way the states teachers are selected and paid.

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1. In economics, as well as the majority of social science and business theory, we make certain assumptions when trying to explain the behavior of groups or individuals as with this situation. These assumptions are not thought to be accurate 100% of the time, but they have a necessary "simplifying" effect: that is, they make it possible to objectively analyze or predict behavior. In addition, they have proven to be correct the vast majority of the time (and exceptions are generally obvious).
Two of the most basic of these assumptions are rationality and utility-maximization. These should be useful in explaining the teacher's union's position. The assumption of rationality implies that a person or organization acts in a way that they believe will serve their self-interest (under certain constrains, such as availability of information, etc). So we can assume that the teacher's union took the position because it believes that such a position serves the self-interest of its members. The second assumption, utility-maximization, implies that "self-interest" is defined as the highest level of utility; where utility means "satisfaction", or ...

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