Title: Teacher Unions - OVERVIEW, INFLUENCE ON INSTRUCTION AND OTHER EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES - Teachers, National, Nea, and Aft   - StateUniversity.com
Headings: Teacher Unions
Teacher Unions
OVERVIEW, INFLUENCE ON INSTRUCTION AND OTHER EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES
OVERVIEW
The National Education Association
The American Federation of Teachers
Union Influence
Other Teacher Groups
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Overview
Electoral Politics and Lobbying
Collective Bargaining
Peer Review
Induction
Professional Development
Performance-Based Pay
Programmatic Reform Initiatives
Dissemination of Information about Best Practice
Effect on Educational Reform
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Additional topics

Content: These losses were more than compensated by the addition of huge numbers of individual members at the state and national level, most of whom, as they had always done, joined the local association at the urging of their colleagues, whether or not they had any understanding of, commitment to, or even interest in, the state and national organizations. This membership growth was both accompanied and accelerated by the NEA's establishment of its Uniserv program, which led to the creation of hundreds of offices across the nation in cooperation with its state and local affiliates. The state affiliates employ the Uniserv staff but, with financial and coordinating support from the NEA, these staff function as quasi-NEA employees. Within less than thirty years there were 1,800 of these staff members. In 1972 the NEA also became the first national education organization with a political action committee, one that remains among the nation's largest and most influential. By the 1990s the NEA came to have one of the largest delegations to the quadrennial Democratic National Convention and a smaller delegation at the Republican National Convention. One example of its influence was the establishment of the U.S. Department of Education by Congress in 1979, with the support of President Jimmy Carter, whom the NEA had endorsed in 1976, despite the opposition of the AFT. Teacher unions also benefit from advantages that Congress has granted unions in general, such as exemption from laws prohibiting conspiracies in restraint of trade. Ironically, at the peak of their power and influence, the NEA and AFT face more pressures and opposition than ever before. Internal problems for the NEA include the tendency of newer teachers to show less interest in joining.