ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why and how the National Education Association (NEA) was responded to occupational turmoil that characterized the lives of both teachers and superintendents and remade itself in post-World War I years. The major conflict obscured by concept of professionalism, as already suggested, was that which existed between teachers and school administrators. When Crabtree retired in early 1930s, the number of staff had risen to 140 and the number of divisions to nine. In addition to numbers, another way to look at NEA staff growth, at how it contributed to pursuit of the association's professional agenda and how the association appealed both to teachers and superintendents, is to profile the career of the association's most visible woman staff member. A recent study of federal involvement in education in the 1920s highlighted the way that the NEA combined the occupational agenda of better teacher salaries with the pursuit of professionalism, two consistent themes of Williams in her work.
