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Hawaii is No. 1 in at least one area of education: Strongest teachers union in the nation.

The , a nonprofit Washington think tank focusing on education policy, released a report Monday that puts the Hawaii State Teachers Association at the top of the chart.

The study ranked the country’s teachers unions based on five areas: resources and membership; involvement in politics; scope of bargaining; state policies and perceived influence. Hawaii was first in only one of those categories — involvement in politics — but the weighting formula used by the researchers made it the highest overall.

Wil Okabe, HSTA’s president, said the HSTA has a strong record that the study validated.

“Our union has to negotiate with the governor, superintendent and the BOE of the state,” he said in an email. “Most teachers’ unions have to negotiate with the school superintendent or the mayor. The basis of this report’s findings may reflect that Hawaii’s teachers refuse to allow the governor to impose an unfair collective bargaining agreement on us.”

“If we wanted to allow our profession to be disrespected, we could have had a contract 18 months ago,” Okabe said. “We are not allowing this to happen because we believe in the dignity of our profession. We are a strong union who needs a contract to help teachers in this state ensure children in their classrooms will succeed.”

Joan Husted, former HSTA executive director, said she agrees Hawaii has a very strong teachers union. Leading the nation in the political involvement category didn’t surprise her either.

“HSTA’s position has been since 1972 that every education decision is a political decision,” she said. “You can’t think of any decision that is made about the classroom, about school, about the district that hasn’t been made by a legislator or by the board.”

Hawaii’s teacher union has been a major player in state politics in the past 10 years, the study says. Its donations accounted for 1.5 percent of total contributions received by candidates for state office, which was ninth highest in the nation, and those contributions equaled 15.4 percent of all contributions from the 10 highest-giving sectors in the state.

In addition, a full 20 percent of Hawaii’s delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions were teacher union members, the study says.

What’s more interesting is how low the study ranks HSTA’s perceived influence, 23rd overall.

“Despite the union’s considerable resources, when compared to respondents in other states, Hawaii stakeholders perceive the strength of their union to be moderate, on a par with that of the state school board and association of school administrators,” the study says. “They agree that the HSTA fought hard in light of recent budgetary constraints to prevent reductions in pay and benefits and that the union is generally effective in protecting dollars for education. The perception of limited influence despite substantial resources could indicate that the state union is maintaining a low profile in a favorable environment, may reflect the union’s recent clashes with state leaders, or potentially illustrates the union’s waning reputation after the state famously (or infamously) briefly implemented a four-day week in the fall of 2009 as a belt-tightening measure.”

The study highlights the union’s ongoing contract dispute with the state. It notes the tentative agreement HSTA leaders reached with Gov. Neil Abercrombie‘s negotiations team — which could’ve helped pull Hawaii off high-risk status with the feds over the $75 million Race to the Top grant — and its eventual rejection by teachers when put to a vote in January.

Teachers subsequently approved the same tentative contract agreement this summer, but the governor said it was off the table.

Union leaders said the reason teachers shot it down the first time around was because they didn’t fully understand what they were voting on. They held informational meetings the second time to improve this, but they also changed a “no” vote to mean authorizing the union to call for a strike.

State Sen. Jill Tokuda, who chairs the education committee, said she wished the study would have also looked at a union’s strength in terms of its relationship with its members.

“When I think about what is a strong union, I think of a union that’s able to communicate effectively and correctly with its membership — that determines whether they’ll be effective,” she said.

Meanwhile, the union is waiting for the Hawaii Labor Relations Board to rule on its case against the state over Abercrombie unilaterally imposing a “last, best, final offer” last year.

Husted said she was surprised Hawaii was ranked ninth overall in scope of bargaining and state policies.

“The community must wonder, if they’re so damn strong, why haven’t they been able to settle this?” she said.

The study ranked Hawaii as high as it did in part because it is one of 21 states that require collective bargaining and permit unions to automatically collect agency fees from non-member teachers — a key source of union revenue ($705 per member per year).

Husted was also a bit shocked by the study ranking the union’s perceived influence as low as it did. She said if anything, she thinks people overestimate HSTA’s influence as well as that of most public employee unions.

“That always bothered me,” she said. “They believed that every decision that was made for public education was made by the teachers union. If it were, things would be considerably different.”

Husted said Hawaii has gradually weakened HSTA’s power over time. She said this differs from the recent approach other states, such as Wisconsin and Ohio, have taken to reduce the influence of unions in one fell sweep.

“I call it the death by a thousand cuts in Hawaii, taking a little here, a little there,” she said. “Those states took a meat ax to collective bargaining. Our legislators took a scalpel.”

Tokuda said she wasn’t too surprised by the study ranking Hawaii so high given the significant changes other states are making to tenure and collective bargaining laws, as well as teacher evaluation policies. She said those things can be viewed as putting policy-makers and union leaders in conflict.

The contract offer teachers shot down in January includes a new teacher evaluation system incorporating student growth, which is part of the Race to the Top plan. The study notes that legislation intended to pave the way for the new evaluation system died in the Senate in April. The Board of Education subsequently approved a policy to accomplish the same goal over the objection of some union members.

Husted agreed with the authors of the study — Janie Schull, Amber Winkler and Dara Zeehandelaar — that Hawaii having just one single centralized school district can make the union stronger. That’s part of why HSTA made political involvement a top priority.

“You don’t have diffused decision-making like in other states that may have 5,000 school districts,” Husted said. “The centralized decision-making both in collective bargaining and in the Department of Education would make it understandable that HSTA would work very hard to influence the political decision-makers.”

Click to read the full study, called “How Strong Are U.S. Teacher Unions? A State-By-State Comparison.”

Here’s the Hawaii section of the study: