With more than 20,000 members, the Arizona Education Association is the largest professional organization in Arizona. AEA was formed more than a century ago, in 1892, when a group of Arizona educators banded together to protest the use of 14-year-old textbooks. Since then AEA continues to take the lead in advocating for support of Arizona's public schools, improving the quality of public education through positive change, and improving the professional lives of teachers and school staff members.

AEA members are teachers, community college professors, counselors, speech pathologists, bus drivers, secretaries, retired educators and student teachers and they belong to more than 150 local affiliates across Arizona.