In the years since Fordham’s landmark 2012 study on teachers union strength, the education and policymaking landscapes have changed dramatically. In less than 15 years, we’ve witnessed a widespread decline in student achievement, waves of teacher strikes, mandatory union fees abolished, pandemic-era remote learning (and a bumpy return-to-school), the rise of parent advocates, and an escalation of partisan divides.
With so much change afoot, Fordham teamed up with researchers Melissa Arnold Lyon, Sandy Frost Waldron, and Rebecca Jacobsen to update our rankings of teachers union strength across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Building on the previous iteration, our new report ranks states based on 59 measures in five categories: Resources and Membership, Involvement in Politics, Labor and Bargaining Policies, Policy Wins and Losses, and Perceived Influence. Together, these measures provide a comprehensive picture of teachers union strength today.
The study generated extensive coverage, from national reporting in The Wall Street Journal and Education Week to state and local stories, both where the ranking changed substantially since 2012 and where unions remained powerful over time.
Hawaii, Oklahoma, and West Virginia each fell a handful of places in the rankings and earned brief media coverage. But among all 27 states with lower rankings in 2026, North Carolina and Wisconsin journalists had the most to say.
Ranking dead last for union membership and for labor and bargaining policies, the Tar Heel State dropped from 40th to 48th overall—a shift that even report co-author Lyon found to be “a surprise.” Coverage highlighted longtime state barriers to union power, such as the prohibition of collective bargaining, alongside possible explanations for the change, such as lowered teacher pay. A Cardinal & Pine story identified the findings as “critical context” for pending state legislation on workplace picketing.
Still other North Carolina stories used the study to explore mixed attitudes toward teachers unions. From a union-skeptic angle, one Substack raised concerns about padded union membership numbers, and also dug into North Carolina districts’ lackluster effort to leverage this year’s May Day protests for worker rights and economic justice. An article in Raleigh’s News & Observer, more sympathetic to unions, spotlighted a state union leader’s objections to the study (“A think tank report… does not define our impact”).
In contrast, Wisconsin’s drop from 18th to 36th did not take readers by surprise. The state’s Act 10—which restricted collective bargaining and negotiation options—was passed only shortly before the release of our prior report, so its data didn’t capture the law’s full effects. (Plus, the Badger State was famously the launching point for the federal Janus v. AFSCME decision, which deemed mandatory union fees unconstitutional.) At least three journalists unpacked the relationship between Act 10 and relatively weaker teachers unions in Wisconsin. Another, from Urban Milwaukee, elevated the perspectives of state union leaders: One saw the report as exaggerating claims of union decline, and another argued that the data actually show that Wisconsin unions “have punched far above their weight.”
Among the states that rose in the rankings, bigger gains didn’t necessarily translate into more headlines. Virginia (+18), New Mexico (+17), and Connecticut (+5) received only modest coverage. On the other hand, California (+4) and New Jersey (+3)—both consistently in the top ten—garnered greater attention, suggesting that readers are intrigued not only by changes in union strength but also by factors that sustain union strength.
Writing about the Golden State, which climbed from sixth to second, EdSource noted its high rankings across multiple measures, such as perceived influence, political spending, teacher salaries, and teacher strikes. Business Insider, however, flagged that these high scores don’t correlate to impressive performance across other measures of educational success: U.S. News & World Report ranks California only 24th nationally for K–12 education, and California eighth graders performed below the national average in math on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
New Jersey, with a nearly parallel rise from seventh to fourth, was subject to commentary on the relationships among teachers union strength, politics, and student achievement. The Garden State’s Sunlight Policy Center slammed unions’ relationship to the Democratic Party in one article, and in another, argued that the ten strongest union states had relatively higher spending and lower NAEP scores than the ten weakest union states. Taking a similar angle, a piece from the NJ Education Report was particularly critical of former Governor Phil Murphy, who held the office from 2018 to 2026.
Whether state and local media are digging into our data or using the report as a lens to examine teachers unions within their own political and educational contexts, we are glad to see that Fordham’s updated teachers union strength rankings have been of value to audiences in states blue, red, and purple, from Hawaii to Connecticut. Be sure to check out your state’s detailed union strength profile and see how it compares.
