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: This continuity of officers, and its representation of teachers in key urban areas, especially in such media centers as Washington, D.C., and New York City, has enabled the AFT and its presidents to develop greater visibility than the NEA and its leaders, thus partially offsetting the advantages the NEA enjoys because it represents far more people and resources and has a virtually universal distribution of its membership throughout society. The AFT embraced collective bargaining earlier and more enthusiastically than the NEA, but changing circumstances and the competition between the two organizations resulted in victories and growth for both, including legislative and political victories that saw collective bargaining laws adopted in more than half of the states by the early 1970s. During the tumult of the 1960s AFT membership increased five-fold, from 60,000 in 1961 to 300,000 in 1970 and to 820,000 in 1993, by which time, except for Nevada, the AFT had affiliates in every state plus the District of Columbia, in U.S. territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico, and in ten other nations. But these members represent fewer than 2,300 local organizations, far less than the NEA's more than 13,000. Additionally, nearly half of the locals were in New York state. Union Influence
The AFT's 900,000 members at the start of the twenty-first century, coupled with the NEA's 2.3 million, give the two unions representation of about three-quarters of all public school teachers; 40 percent of all unionized public employees; a total income at the local, state, and national levels of nearly $1.5 billion; 6,000 employees, more than both major political parties combined; and a distribution of membership and power from r