Once as familiar in the back-to-school ritual as falling leaves, teacher strikes seem headed for a winter freeze. According to the nation's largest teacher's union, about 15 of the National Education Association's (NEA) 14,000 local affiliates have gone on strike since the start of this school year. In Pennsylvania--a traditional union stronghold--educators in the 3,300-student Pottsgrove district sat out 10 days in September over salary and health insurance issues before settling. While they had to agree to start paying a small, though slowly growing, share of their health insurance premiums, the teachers, who earned an average of $59,500 last year, also won a 2 percent annual raise over and above their yearly 2 percent step increases. In Illinois, teachers from 1,300-student Chicago Ridge district sat out eight days this fall. They won continued free primary health insurance and a 21 percent raise over four years in exchange for a half-hour extension to their official six-hour-10-minute day. According to Carolyn York, the NEA's manager of collective bargaining and member advocacy, what she sees is that educators are starting to stand up and say that they are worth professional pay. Districts, she adds, are "looking at what it takes to recruit and retain new teachers." Some analysts suggest that it is just such pay and benefits that have alienated parents and other citizens who might once have supported teachers' strikes. Organized labor has lost clout, they argue, because among other factors the overworked public has become impatient with educators' demands for benefits that have become scarce at most private-sector jobs. The poverty-level wages and decline of employee entitlements at such vanguard companies as Wal-Mart can make educators' working conditions look rosy by comparison, according to Scott Treiblitz, president of Tricom Associates, and Arlington, Virginia-based, communications and consulting firm that specializes in education and labor issues.