The Wisconsin Education Association Council is almost as old as the state itself. WEAC has existed in its current form since 1972, and as the Wisconsin Teachers Association and Wisconsin Education Association since 1853—just five years after Wisconsin became the 30th state. Schools, education, and the organization have undergone tremendous change since 1853, but certain core values have remained unchanged since the days when eight educators gathered in Madison to form the Wisconsin Teachers Association.

The purpose of the organization has always been to improve the lot of public schools and schoolchildren for the betterment of everyone who lives and works in Wisconsin. Whether it is curriculum development, pro-education legislation, litigation, pro-public school advertising, or collective bargaining, when the organization succeeds, so do Wisconsin’s schools and children.

At the time of the Wisconsin Teachers Association’s founding, female teachers were paid half of what male teachers made and neither wage was enough to live on without some other means of subsistence. School attendance was poor and most children did not graduate from high school. Only the children of the elite went on to college. School buildings were dilapidated and poorly equipped and teachers received very little, if any training.

A century later, when WEAC officially became a teachers union in 1972, Wisconsin’s schools had no set standards and many Wisconsin teachers qualified for food stamps and had poor health insurance or no health insurance at all.

From those humble beginnings Wisconsin’s public schools have become some of the best in the world, with the top score in the nation on the ACT college entrance exam for eight years running and a high school dropout rate that was tied for the lowest in 2000.

Wisconsin’s schools are among the best because they are staffed with the best teachers and the best education support personnel. And the quality of Wisconsin’s schools ensures the state’s long-term prosperity in an economy that relies ever more heavily on an educated, disciplined work force, smarter and more efficient leadership, and an active, involved citizenry.

These improvements for schools and the education profession have not been achieved accidentally or through some kind of passive evolution. They happened because generations of members made them happen. These members are the heroes of this history. Their faith in collective action, their resolve to make the union work, and their sacrifices in building an organization to represent them, are the often unacknowledged engines that drive everything in this book.

As any history teacher will tell you, history books should be lived rather than merely read, to serve as a blueprint for how we conduct our affairs today and in the future, rather than for the purpose of simply retelling the past. This book comes at a time when the hope and faith and vision of our predecessors can instruct the strategy for the new millennium and the new economy. Some of the challenges the education profession will face in the near future are old, some are new, and some are unforeseen. But knowing our history makes us ready for anything.

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