High school students in Crandon, 1905.

The Wisconsin Education Association Council traces its history to 1853, when eight educators met in Madison and formed the Wisconsin Teachers Association (WTA), sometimes called the Wisconsin State Teachers Association. Eighty-two years later, the association would rename itself the Wisconsin Education Association. In 1972, WEA put the “C” in WEAC, after turning what many considered primarily a “social” or professional organization into one of the most active, successful and powerful state teachers unions in the nation. WEAC now represents public school teachers, educational support personnel, Student WEA student teachers, Wisconsin Technical College System employees, state of Wisconsin education and information professionals, and WEAC retired members.

Throughout Wisconsin history, WEA and WTA put on the annual teachers’ convention and lobbied and advocated for schools and schoolchildren. In 1906, teachers voted to change the practice of holding the convention during the Christmas holidays. It has been held in October or November ever since.

While public school teachers always comprised a majority of the membership, school administrators and college professors dominated the organization’s leadership and decision-making for most of the 119 years prior to the 1972 reorganization.

Teachers and educational support personnel did not have much influence over the organization in the early years, but the value of the association’s history to current members should not be underestimated.

By 1903, WTA had more than 1,200 members. In 1913, its ranks had grown to 6,000 members, and the association lobbied for and passed the $40 annual minimum salary law. During the Great Depression the association lobbied to have the minimum increased to $65, and demanded that teachers be paid in cash rather than scrip. When the association turned 100 years old in 1953,
and its membership had grown to more than 23,000, WEA helped pass the $2,600 minimum salary law. In 1921, the association was instrumental in the establishment of the State Teachers Retirement System, a precursor to the Wisconsin Retirement System.

WEAC's formation as a union and the organization's decision to engage in political action has meant as many gains for schoolchildren as it has for the union's members themselves.

WEAC’s formation as a union and the organization’s decision to engage in political action has meant many gains for Wisconsin’s schoolchildren. While wages, benefits, and job security have increased precipitously for WEAC members in the days since reorganizing into a union, the benefits to schools and schoolchildren have been even greater.

These same motivations—improving the lot of schoolchildren by improving schools and the lives of school teachers—provided the impetus for the foundation of the WTA. In 1853, the average wage was $18.17 a month for male teachers and $9.94 for female teachers. While not acknowledging the injustice of the “head of household” gender disparity that would continue for more than 100 years, State Superintendent A. Constantine Barry declared that teacher pay in general needed to be increased:

We learn from this [survey] of the average amount paid teachers
that the man who saws our wood or takes care of our horses; and the female who resides in the kitchen or dairy room are better paid as a general thing than those we employ in the work of educating our children. Now we may complain of the scarcity of good teachers till doomsday, and they will never be other than scarce so long as we offer no better inducements for preparation and no more adequate reward for ability and experience. Poor pay, poor preach, applies in this matter.

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