Internal documents reveal Oregon teachers union exodus is a crisis of its own making

Internal documents reveal the Oregon Education Association lost nearly 20 percent of its membership.

Corey A. DeAngelis is National Director of Research at the American Federation for Children and Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute.

According to the union’s most recent internal documents, OEA reported an active membership of 41,784 out of 48,774 represented educators during the 2019-20 school year. By 2020-21, however, that number had shrunk to 41,127 — perhaps in part because the workforce shrank by nearly 1,000 teachers during the COVID pandemic.

But in the most recent 2021-22 school year, OEA membership continued to decline to only 40,634 dues-paying members, even though the total number of OEA-represented teachers topped 50,000 for the first time.