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Amber Northern

Amber Northern

Amber Northern is Senior Vice President for Research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a leading education-reform think tank, and hosts a research segment on the Education Gadfly Show podcast.

Jun 18, 2026

The Ricochet Superfeed

The Ricochet Superfeed

Freedom to Learn: Amber Northern on Teachers Unions’ Strength, Perception, & Politics

Jun 18 · 31m

Ginny Gentles
Ginny GentlesHOST
2:26
Anything that you'd want to say about that 2012 report and what inspired you to go ahead and update it this year? Janice was one thing that happened,
Amber Northern
Amber NorthernGUEST
2:34
right? which is the Supreme Court law that basically prohibited unions from collecting agency fees from non-members.
Amber Northern
Amber NorthernGUEST
2:43
So in other words, you can't collect money from folks who aren't members of the union.
Amber Northern
Amber NorthernGUEST
2:46
And we had a sinking feeling that that might have influenced membership across states.
Amber Northern
Amber NorthernGUEST
2:54
And also this thing of... just a resurgence of education advocacy organizations that really weren't there in 2012.
Amber Northern
Amber NorthernGUEST
3:01
We wanted to see, okay, what impact might these other players have relative to influencing education policy? So I don't know.
Amber Northern
Amber NorthernGUEST
3:11
We just felt like, number one, it had been a long time.
Ginny Gentles
Ginny GentlesHOST
6:02
What else should listeners know about the method?

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