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: Until then the NEA permitted members to join any combination of the local, state, and national units, although some local and state affiliates had different rules. A 1975 provision added to the NEA Constitution established a unified membership, whereby those who did join would have to do so at all three levels. Until then the NEA included departments with specific professional interests, such as administrators, math or science, and curriculum or instruction, in both basic and higher education. With the introduction of unified dues many local affiliated organizations dropped out. These included not only the professional interest groups but even the Missouri state association, which had been one of the NEA's charter members in 1857. 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.