A national report which saw big drops in teacher union membership and strength in North Carolina has raised some interesting responses from local media outlets in the Tar Heel State.
The report, commissioned by the Fordham Institute of Ohio, found membership among teachers in NCAE declined from 49 percent of educators in 2008 to 21 percent of educators in 2021. The decline is the second largest nationally. Second only to Wisconsin which passed sweeping reforms in 2010 that significantly weakened unions.
Local Raleigh outlet WRAL.com ran an article on the report earlier this week and said researchers “are surprised” at the drop in membership. When asked what caused the significant drop in North Carolina’s union membership, Melissa Arnold Lyon, one of the researchers, told WRAL she isn’t quite sure.
North Carolina was more of a surprise,” Lyon said. Teachers could be joining other groups that aren’t employee associations, or it could be that new teachers aren’t joining and replacing retiring teachers who were members, Lyon theorized, adding that she really didn’t know. But the drop coincides with the state’s declining rankings in average teacher pay.
If younger teachers are coming into the profession with lower pay and no collective bargaining rights, Lyon said, “then it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to expect that those newer teachers wouldn’t see the benefit of joining a union.”
A day later, the News and Observer (N&O), told us what it thought of the report when it ran a Reality Check on the report. The N&O article took issue with the report claims. For example, in response to the claim that “teacher unions are weaker than they were a decade ago.” The N&O asked NCAE president, Tamika Walker Kelly to respond. Walker Kelly said the organization is growing in strength and has added 1,000 new members since its march in Downtown Raleigh.
North Carolina’s ranking of 48th (out of 51 places) in perceived influence was also brought up. Researchers had asked education leaders and education policy advocates in every state to identity who was the major player in education policies in their state. According to the report, North Carolina was ranked 48th in the area of perceived influence for teachers’ unions.
Melissa Arnold Lyon, one of the authors of the report told the News and Observer that NCAE is still an important factor in state education politics. But from the perspective of many actors, NCAE is not the primary actor, but one of many actors driving education policy in the state.
Again, the News and Observer asked Walker-Kelly to respond. She said NCAE is one of the fastest growing unions in the country and pointed to the huge turnout for the teacher protest rally in Raleigh on May 1st.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised by these stories.
Being mystified by a decades-long trend only says you’re not looking close enough at the problem. There are answers.
Talking to the head of a teacher’s union may be the best way to get an idea of what the teachers union thinks. I don’t know how it helps to validate facts.
Walker-Kelly says NCAE membership is up 1,000 members since the May 1 teacher rally in Raleigh. If that’s the case, wouldn’t the organization be willing to substantiate the claim by opening its books to validate new members?
It’s true that the organization turned out thousands for the May rally, but does how does that fact translate into influence? If so, why did no member of the Democratic leadership address the crowd in Raleigh? Why was there no movement on teacher salaries for months?
I’m not surprised by the Fordham report findings. NCAE membership and influence has been on the decline for years. It’s a theme I’ve written about frequently. See here and here .
Yes, there may very well have been a modest uptick in membership in recent years.
In 2023, the North Carolina Association of Educators reported having a membership of almost 26,000. In 2024, that number climbed to almost 27,000 members. However, that number included more than just teachers. Teachers as a percentage of total membership continues to decline.
The problem is that exact numbers are difficult to come by. The State Auditor collects information on employee associations. NCAE, however, is not a public organization and is not required to divulge membership numbers. Again, if membership is growing, wouldn’t NCAE leadership want to be the first to share the news?
Even if the uptick happens, what’s undeniable is the uptick happened against a backdrop of years of steady decline in NCAE members.
Researchers and local media may be hesitant to offer reasons for the decline, I am not. In my view three factors account for much of the decline.
First, many teachers joined NCAE initially because the organization offered teachers legal liability insurance and represented teachers during salary negotiations. Now teachers can buy liability insurance through the state or other organizations, often at a lower rate. It’s no longer a practical necessity to join NCAE.
Second, NCAE leadership and its national leadership skew overwhelmingly Democratic. Surveys of the teacher profession show it to be ideologically divided with more teachers identifying as Republicans and Independents than often realized by NCAE or NEA leadership. Those decisions have consequences.
Third, the policy stances of the NEA and NCAE are often at odds with those of rank and file teachers. For example NEA and NCAE fiercely oppose school choice,embrace identify politics in the classroom and regularly pass resolutions on controversial issues like race, gender and sexual identity. Moderate and conservative educators frequently argue that such issues alienate large numbers of teachers and pull them away from their core responsibilities of academic instruction and student improvement.
Why is NCAE in decline? I think most of us know why. Why others refuse to recognize those reasons is a question that begs to be answered.
