Empowering teachers and parents to starve the beast and break the monopoly.
T eachers’ unions have hijacked America’s education system, wielding their power to push far-left political agendas while neglecting the needs of teachers and students. The best way to dismantle these one-sided political organizations is a two-pronged approach: Starve the beast by convincing teachers to opt out of paying union dues and defund their public school monopoly by empowering parents with school choice. Together, these strategies can break the unions’ stranglehold and restore parental rights in education.
The 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision was a game-changer for empowering teachers. The Court ruled that forcing public employees, including teachers, to pay union dues as a condition of employment violates their First Amendment rights by compelling them to fund political causes they may find objectionable. This landmark ruling shattered the unions’ ability to coerce teachers into financing partisan schemes.
Yet, many teachers hesitate to opt out, fearing the loss of protections like liability insurance. That excuse no longer holds. The Teacher Freedom Alliance just announced that they provide $2 million in liability insurance and general support for teachers who join — and it’s free. Teachers can now opt out, keep more of their hard-earned money, and remain legally protected.
School choice is a critical weapon in this fight, as it defunds unaccountable public schools and gives teachers’ unions a reason to cater to the needs of kids and not just adults. When parents can take their children’s education dollars to private, charter, or homeschool options, public schools lose funding tied to enrollment. This competition threatens the unions’ government school monopoly, which relies on captive students to justify bloated budgets.
Instead of focusing on improving education to retain students, union bosses like Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle lean harder into political activism to maintain their power, pushing divisive ideologies in classrooms to appease far-left radicals. School choice remedies this problem, as families flee to schools that focus on academics rather than politics, draining union-controlled systems of resources and incentivizing reform.
The teachers’ unions’ political bias is blatant. A staggering 98 percent of the National Education Association’s campaign contributions went to Democrats in the last election cycle, despite only 41 percent of teachers identifying as Democrats in an Education Week survey. This funding stream is essentially a money-laundering operation for the Democratic Party.
Conservative and independent teachers, who make up the other 59 percent of the profession, are forced to fund their political opponents while union bosses like Weingarten, who pocketed over $600,000 in 2024, and Pringle, an at-large Democratic National Committee member raking in over half a million dollars annually, live lavishly. These union elites are an embarrassment to teachers who just want to teach reading, writing, and math.
Dismantling the unions doesn’t just empower teachers. It improves student outcomes. A 2025 National Bureau of Economic Research study found that weakening teachers’ unions through reforms like Janus improved student outcomes without hurting good teachers. The professors noted, “We find that the reform cut union revenues, raised student test scores, and increased pay for some teachers.”
Teachers are getting a raw deal in the government-run school system. Since 1970, inflation-adjusted spending per student has surged 164 percent, yet average teacher salaries have only risen about 3 percent in real terms. The money isn’t reaching classrooms because the system is a monopoly with no incentive to spend wisely. Union bosses push for more staffing and administrative bloat to swell their ranks with dues-paying members, maximizing union revenues to fuel their political pet projects.
If the 59 percent of non-Democrat teachers — which could be over 1.7 million of the National Education Association’s 3 million members — opted out, the unions would lose $1.7 billion annually, assuming an average membership fee of $1,000 per teacher. This mass exodus would cripple their funding and influence, slashing their ability to bankroll Democratic campaigns.
The NBER study also found that weakening unions increases Republican vote shares, a natural outcome when the Democratic Party’s education arm is starved. Rational teachers, especially the 59 percent who don’t identify as Democrats, would be foolish not to opt out of funding a group that’s lost touch with educators and students — and is an extension of the Democratic Party.
Union bosses like Weingarten and Pringle don’t represent teachers who want politics out of the classroom. By opting out, teachers can reclaim their paychecks, protect their classrooms, and help dismantle a system that prioritizes power over education. The Teacher Freedom Alliance makes the move risk-free. It’s time for teachers to stand up, opt out, and starve the beast.