Chartered in 1974, TFT is the state affiliate of the one million-member American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. Our membership consists of teachers and other educational workers who have joined together to provide a strong voice for education in the community, at the state level, and at a national level.

The presence of the Texas Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers means that there is in Texas an organization that devotes itself to teachers and educational workers and to the children they influence. Our organization regards those who work in education as first-class citizens, entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizenship — and we believe these civil rights are not left behind when school employees cross the threshold of their school or work site. We work together to create a strong voice that reflects the thinking of our membership, and we work together with parents and taxpayers who care about their children and the future of public schools in Texas.

Our goals are to bring dignity to teachers and educational workers by ensuring a decent living salary and decent working conditions, and to deliver full educational opportunity to Texas schoolchildren. We work to ensure a strong voice for teachers in formulating all programs that affect students. We know that because we are front-line professional educators, we should be in the forefront of decision-making for education in Texas. We know that we can fulfill this role through collectively bargained contracts, so gaining the right to collective bargaining for school employees is central to our mission.

Today TFT has 51,000 members. Dozens of staff members in our state office, in our affiliated locals, and in PEG offices around the state assist our members in advocacy, organizing, and all the other activities that give members a strong voice on the local and state and national levels. With 25 offices across the state, TFT offers members service that is close to home. No other school-employee group can match TFT's ability to provide instant service to members right in the communities where our members live and work.

Through our affiliation with the Texas AFL-CIO, we also enlist on behalf of teachers and educational workers the support of hundreds of thousands of other Texans, who embrace and assist our efforts to bring dignity to those working in education and an equal educational opportunity to our students.