The National Education Association

Abstract

        The NEA, the nation’s largest labor union, is a strongly liberal interest group centered on public education, particularly the benefits of teachers, administrators, and other professionals in the education field.  In its long, 150 year history, it has improved the quality of education immensely and has proliferated public education to include equal opportunity for underprivileged minorities, and has grown in size exponentially.  It has merged with several smaller educational organizations, and today it is by far the largest educational organization in the U.S.  Today, it is largely concerned with educationally minded legislative acts such as the No Child Left Behind Act and the American Recovery Reinvestment Act (economic stimulus package).  The majority of its financial contributions go to like-minded Democratic politicians, and so they in turn receive much support from them.  The NEA also holds official positions on issues that don’t directly concern education.  For example, the NEA is pro-choice, and supports the legalization of same-sex marriage and amnesty to illegal aliens.

        The National Education Association (NEA) is a strongly liberal American interest group whose primary focus is the advancement of the quality of public education (Center for Responsive Politics, 2009).  It is the largest labor union in the U.S. (Center for Union Facts, 2006).  The organization was founded in 1857 after 43 educators from ten different state education associations united to form a cohesive, nationwide voice, which was then known as the National Teachers Association (NTA) (Holcomb, 2006).  Its first major legislative victory came in 1867, when the NTA successfully lobbied Congress to establish a federal Department of Education (Holcomb, 2006).  Some issues the organization (its name changed to the NEA upon absorbing three smaller education groups) focused on in the following years were the guarantee of free education for African Americans during Reconstruction, reform in the culture-stripping methods of American Indian education, and the prohibition of child labor (Holcomb, 2006).  The highlight of NEA’s history came about a century after the end of the Civil War, when the NEA merged with the American Teachers Association (ATA), an organization for African-American educators, in 1966 (Holcomb, 2006).  This merger was momentous in that it was made at the height of the Civil Rights movement, a bold statement of goodwill toward racial integration and equal rights to all, including women and other minority groups.  Today, the NEA holds a powerful legacy for having influenced the progression of equal rights for African-Americans, women, Native Americans, and all minorities through an indispensable and fundamental outlet:  the classroom.