Faced with arguably the biggest crisis of its 155-year history--the loss of at least 100,000 full-time members--the nation's largest union plans to respond by organizing thousands of new members and transforming itself into an even more politically potent force. Whether the National Education Association (NEA) can accomplish those goals while simultaneously advocating improvements to the teaching profession--a role publicly supported by its leaders, but contested among the rank and file--remains an open question. Nothing less than the organization's future appears to hinge on the answer. Since 2010, the teachers' union estimates, the NEA has lost the equivalent of 100,000 full-time members, bringing its overall numbers to approximately 3 million educators. By the end of its 2013-2014 budget cycle, the union expects it will have lost 308,000 full-time members and experienced a decline in dues revenue projected at some $65 million in all. The drastic slide in the NEA's membership reflects a rapid change in the political and policy context over the past four years. The NEA was among the groups that championed $100 billion in federal stimulus aid for education that helped many teachers maintain their positions, as well as a supplemental $10 billion specifically earmarked for education jobs. The stimulus money brought with it Obama administration initiatives unpopular with teachers' unions, such as the Race to the Top program, which emphasized teacher accountability and performance pay, ideas more traditionally associated with Republicans. In 2011, after big GOP gains in the midterm elections, came disastrous events from a union perspective: a spate of attacks on collective bargaining from Republican-led legislatures, some apparently emboldened by the tough talk from Democratic leaders on education. The sum total of those events has thrust the NEA into a dramatic, and at times disconcerting, shift in priorities, according to sources in the union's Washington headquarters, who detect in the recent staff reorganizations a desire to reshape the union into even more of a political heavyweight--one focused primarily on electing labor-friendly politicians. The union has been a powerful political force in the United States for decades, but its roots as a professional association have kept it somewhat removed from other labor coalitions that have historically served as the backbone of the Democratic party.