This year, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, commonly known as the PTA, is celebrating its centennial. But the national PTA has little to cheer about. Fewer than a quarter of America's public schools have active PTA chapters, and officially, PTA membership has fallen from a peak of 12 million in 1966 to 6.5 million today.
PTA leaders offer many reasons why their rolls are declining. But they have done little to address the PTA's gravest problem--its subservience to the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Throughout its history, the PTA has supported higher salaries and better working conditions for teachers. But in 1968, the teacher members of the PTA threatened to withdraw membership and boycott the PTA if the PTAs supported school boards in teacher strikes. Thereupon, the PTA rolled over and adopted a position of "neutrality" on teacher strikes as well as the issues negotiated in union contracts, such as class size, the annual number of parent-teacher conferences, and how parental grievances are resolved. "Neutrality" on these important issues is a big setback for parents: When school boards sacrifice parent interests to teacher interests, as often happens, the PTA does not object.
As millions of parents dropped out of the PTA, those who remained tended to be pro-union or unaware of the PTA's pro-union positions. And so the PTA has gradually evolved into a front for the teachers' unions. Consider these recent issues:
Given the way PTAs are governed, it is virtually impossible for parents to dissent from the views of the teachers' unions. A parent who attempts an open discussion of school choice or teacher tenure at a PTA meeting could cost her child a varsity position or a lead in the school play.
As a result, more and more parents are dropping out of the PTA. In 1996, for instance, 26,000 members of the Indiana Congress of Parents and Teachers simply did not renew their membership. Dozens of local school chapters have cut their ties with the national PTA. In the more than 500 independent charter schools that have been started in the last three years, I know of none affiliated with the PTA hierarchy.
Many parents are instead joining independent parent-teacher organizations (PTOs). In the large Cherry Creek School District in suburban Denver, PTOs have existed since the 1960s, when the district voted to keep the "liberal political agenda" of the PTA out of the district. PTOs also appeal to independent parents who create charter schools. Recently, parents at Warwick Point Academy, a charter school in Linden, Michigan, opted to become a PTO because PTA leaders "think free enterprise is the worst thing you can do to education."
The PTA criticizes PTOs On the grounds that they don't fund national lobbying efforts. But members of PTOs have found they can work through the local education maze more easily without the national policy prohibitions and teachers' union allegiances of the PTA. Parents who want to do more than just talk about parental control, who want to do more than attend monthly fund-raising meetings, and who want to direct their energies toward improving their children's schools are forming effective alternative groups.
