The political influence of teachers’ unions seems to be declining, according to a report released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The report, titled “A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026,” compares recent data with a similar report from 2012 and found that membership in teacher unions has declined in 45 states and Washington, D.C.

Additionally, the proportion of political contributions from teachers’ unions to state political parties fell in 34 states. Not surprisingly, the study found that blue states had the strongest unions, and red states had the weakest unions. The authors suggest that the decline of union influence could be attributed to several changes in the “landscape of education politics.” For example, the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling Janus v. AFSCME prohibited unions from collecting fees from non-members, thus decreasing union revenue. COVID era school closures, which many observers viewed as being heavily influenced by teacher unions, led to public scrutiny of the unions’ role and priorities in education advocacy. This criticism also resulted in the expansion of school choice programs and the growth of alternative education advocacy groups.

The authors pointed to information from the Policy Innovators in Education Network, which reported over 190 education advocacy groups this year, up from only 30 groups in 2012. “Sixty-nine percent of the participants across states didn’t list unions as the ‘most influential player’ when it came to state education politics. So, that’s pretty jarring. It was actually only 36%, a little over a third, that had the unions at all . . . in their top five of players that were most influential in state education politics,” noted Dr. Amber Northern, vice president for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, on a recent episode of the Freedom to Learn podcast. She added, “That’s why we landed on ‘A Crowded Table’ [for the report title]. . . . There were a lot more folks that are trying to exert influence over state education politics than there were in 2012.”

The report concluded that, while teachers’ unions remain influential in educational policy, they are not the dominant force in many states.