Teacher union exodus reaches nearly double-digit percentage since 2018

In 2018, Education Minnesota was financially supported by 95,389 educators. Today, that number is down to 86,676 — a nine percent decline in six years.

The union’s most recent federal LM-2 report, filed with the U.S. Department of Labor at the end of November, confirms its membership hasn’t rebounded since the teacher exodus back in 2018 (FY 2019 in the graph below) when the U.S. Supreme Court freed educators and all other public employees from financially supporting a union as a condition of employment.

Since that High Court ruling, American Experiment’s Educated Teachers project has helped hundreds of teachers every year learn more about and exercise their rights regarding union membership.

Education Minnesota Total Members/Agency Fee Payers, FY 2014-FY 2024

Educators have been saying “no thanks” to union membership over the years for a variety of reasons — there are those who are exhausted by the union’s political leanings, political activism, and apparent intent to take on everything except its primary mission of supporting teachers in their day-to-day professions.

In fact, Education Minnesota dedicates only a quarter (25.5 percent) of its spending to representational activities. (When calculating the percentage spent on representational activities, I removed the dollars the state union receives to send to its affiliates.) The rest of the cash disbursements primarily go toward overhead, administration, benefits, and political activities and lobbying.

The National Education Association (NEA), the national teacher union affiliate to whom Minnesota educator union members pay dues, is also down members. According to its most recent federal LM-2 filing, reported on by the Illinois Policy Institute, the union lost 17,895 members in the 2024 fiscal year alone. Just nine percent of NEA’s spending was on teacher representation, “which should be its core focus. Its spending on politics and other contributions is more than four times higher than its spending on representation,” continues the Illinois Policy Institute.

The NEA is the only labor union with a federal charter, issued by the U.S. Congress back in 1906. The NEA was chartered within the private, nonprofit corporations category, which includes corporations chartered for their patriotic, civic-improvement, charitable, or educational purposes (think the Boy Scouts, the American Red Cross, the U.S. Olympic Committee, Little League Baseball, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, to name a few). NEA’s stated purpose at the time was to “elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching” and to “promote the cause of education in the United States.” Given the union’s partisan political advocacy and apparent divergence from its intended purpose, calls to amend the union’s charter have been proposed.