National Education Association
US teachers' trade union
The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States. It represents public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college students preparing to become teachers. The NEA has 2.8 million members and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The NEA had a budget of $399 million in 2023 along with an endowment of $428 million.
During the early 20th century, the National Education Association was among the leading progressive advocates of establishing a United States Department of Education.
Driven by pressure from teacher organizing, by the 1970s the NEA transformed from an education advocacy organization to a rank-and-file union. In the decades since, the association has continued to represent organized teachers and other school workers in collective bargaining and to lobby for progressive education policy. The NEA's political agenda frequently brings it into conflict with conservative interest groups. State affiliates of the NEA regularly lobby state legislators for funding, seek to influence education policy, and file legal actions.
At the national level, the NEA lobbies the United States Congress and federal agencies and is active in the nominating process for Democratic candidates. The NEA is a major supporter of the Democratic Party.
The public source identifies “National Education Association” as uS teachers' trade union. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around National, Education and Association.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3111510. VIAF identifies the subject as 76145067259266630026. The Library of Congress control number is n79053188. Authority coordinates are 38.906, -77.036. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “National Education Association” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.