membership in the National PTA and its state and local affiliates has shrunk by 75 percent, from a high of 12 million in 1966 to 3 million in 20,000 local chapters today

...Founded in 1897 as the National Congress of Mothers by Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the mother of publisher William Randolph Hearst, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, as the National PTA was long known, remains the largest child advocacy organization in the nation, with a long history of promoting issues ranging from child labor laws and juvenile-justice reforms to increased federal funding for education.

But membership in the National PTA and its state and local affiliates has shrunk by 75 percent, from a high of 12 million in 1966 to 3 million in 20,000 local chapters today—a decline driven, in part, by perceptions among parents and activists like Young in Oakland that it is too white in the face of a diversifying student population, too affluent, too cautious, too connected to the education establishment (particularly teacher unions) and diverts too much money away from local affiliates to the national organization. “The PTA does not take on the hard fights. They don’t say the hard things,” says Keri Rodrigues, the co-founder and president of the National Parents Union, which formed, in part, as a counterweight to teacher unions and other established voices in public education. Parents want something more than just “transactional relationships” with schools, she says...

https://www.educationnext.org/beyond-bake-sales-parent-activist-groups-women-of-color-emerge-significant-new-force-nationwide/