The National Education Association Representative Assembly met for four days earlier this month. This annual event usually reveals how deplorable the organization is, and this year was no different.
High school English teacher Ashlie Crosson, NEA’s 2025 National “Teacher of the Year,” set the tone by claiming that the profession is “deeply political.”
Following suit, NEA Executive Director Kim Anderson rambled on endlessly about political issues unrelated to K-12 education. She droned on about tax credits for the wealthy, the destruction of the “free market of ideas,” and a “social media machine that gaslights Americans every day.”
But the most outrageous speech at the convention—and perhaps ever given—came from NEA boss Becky Pringle, who ranted on about how those in power are “trying to erase the truth of our history. They want to whitewash the past so our students are denied the full story of who we are. They want to silence all of the pain, all of the struggle. Even in the telling of the triumphs, their narration is incomplete. They want to stop our students from looking inward to see their own dignity or outward to a diverse world filled with possibility and pride.”
Worse than the content was Pringle’s tone, which was way beyond hysterical. If you watch this 36-second clip, you will get the idea.
Then there was the panoply of New Business Items, messages of concern from the hoi polloi to the NEA aristocracy for the coming year. NBIs are used to address current issues and direct the NEA to take specific actions. Not one NBI addressed that student learning in the U.S. is tanking. No teacher mentioned that on the 2024 NAEP, the percentage of U.S. public school 4th graders who scored “below basic” on the reading test was the largest in 20 years, at 40%. Some 33% of 8th graders scored “below basic” on the exam—a record low.
Instead, the NBIs veered off into politics. NBI 66 asserts, “NEA will use existing media channels to oppose any move to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education as an illegal, anti-democratic, and racist attempt to destroy public education and privatize it in the interests of the billionaires.”
Not surprisingly, President Trump was omnipresent at the assemblage. In NBI 60, NEA pledged “to defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism by using the term facism [sic] in NEA materials to correctly characterize Donald Trump’s program and actions.”
NBI 58 states, “NEA declares its support for and participation in the mass democratic movement against Trump’s authoritarianism and violations of human rights. We support the ‘No Kings’ movement and the Los Angeles-based movement to defeat Trump’s attempts to use federal forces against the state of California and other states and communities.”
NBA 39 maintains that “NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics. NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”
The ADL, you see, an organization whose mission is to combat antisemitism, is insufficiently dedicated to social justice, and the union feels the need to “support Palestine.”
The measure would have ended nearly 40 years of collaboration between the ADL and U.S. schools involving curriculum, programming, and teacher training. However, in a glimmer of good news, the union backed off the antisemitic measure on July 18.
Becky Pringle explains, “We consulted with NEA state affiliates and civil rights leaders, including Jewish American and Arab American community leaders, and we also met with ADL leadership. After consideration, it was determined that this proposal would not further NEA’s commitment to academic freedom, our membership, or our goals.”
But in reality, teachers’ unions have a history of hostility toward Jews and Israel. For example, in Oregon, the Portland Association of Teachers, an NEA affiliate, published a lesson plan where kindergarteners sit in a circle and learn about the history of Palestine: “Seventy-five years ago, a lot of decision-makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with white skin. There’s a BIG word for when indigenous land gets taken away to make a country; that’s called settler colonialism.”
The United Teachers of Los Angeles is particularly problematic, as the union considers itself a foreign policy authority. In October 2024, its governing body voted to support a congressional effort to block the sale of over $20 billion in U.S. weaponry to Israel because American-supplied arms were being used against civilians.
Because of UTLA leadership’s pro-Palestinian stance, teachers who do not want to be represented by them initiated a lawsuit in October 2024 because the union called for the destruction of the plaintiffs’ religious homeland and “promotes animosity and violence towards people of Jewish descent.”
Republicans also don’t fare well with the NEA, and the union’s spending habits are unambiguous on this issue. While a 2024 Pew Center study found that about 35% of teachers lean Republican, NEA’s political spending completely ignores that. As revealed by Open Secrets, in 2023-2024, the NEA spent $3,275,280 on candidates and political parties.
Did 35% of that go to Republicans?
Hardly. Just $51,922 went in the GOP’s direction, or about 1.5% of the total. Additionally, NEA gave $29,209,261 to liberal groups, and not a penny went to conservative outfits.
The feds are aware of NEA’s shenanigans. In 1906, Congress granted the NEA a special status among U.S. labor unions as a federally chartered corporation to “elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching and to promote the cause of education in the United States.”
Since the union has obviously failed miserably in its mission, GOP lawmakers are trying to revoke its charter. On July 16, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Reps. Mark Harris, R-N.C., Mary Miller, R-Ill., and Ralph Norman, R-S.C., introduced the latest proposal to repeal it. The new legislation was introduced following reports that the NEA prioritized politics over education at its annual meeting.
Ultimately, the best way to reduce the excessive power of teacher unions is for teachers to stop funding them. When teachers join a union, they become part of three organizations: their local union, the state affiliate, and the national organization, with most of their dues going to the latter two.
In California, for example, teacher union members pay around $1,200 yearly. In 2024, $208 was sent to NEA, while $786 was given to its state affiliate, the California Teachers Association. The local contribution differs by district and is usually about $200. Almost none of that money was used for educational purposes.
No Republican, apolitical person, Jew, or anyone concerned about children should join and thereby support such a disreputable, agenda-driven organization.
Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are entirely his own.