As union-controlled public schools in big cities continue failing to educate kids, a new report shows that the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions have contributed almost $50 million to far-left interest groups since 2022.

When kids headed back to school nationwide last week, the Defending Education website reported that the National Education Association (NEA) and American Teachers Federation (AFT) is more interested in promoting crazy causes than educating kids.

Meanwhile, during the same time, multiple reports showed that urban students are not proficient in basic subjects such as math and reading.

As urban kids languish in schools with barely literate teachers, AFT and NEA poured money into a who’s who of leftist kookery.

In the past three years, the two anti-Christian, anti-American unions “have given out a combined $43,524,123 in funding to leftwing and far-left groups,” Defending Education reported.

Some organizations receiving funds include MoveOn.org, PEN America, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Trevor Project, and a handful of state and federal leftwing Political Action Committees (PACs). For example, the two unions gave a combined $9,300,000 to For Our Future Action Fund, a leftwing political action committee. Additionally, the NEA gave the State Engagement Fund $9,500,000 over the same period.

AFT contributed $14,747,625 to organized leftism, while the NEA pumped in almost twice that much with $28,776,500.

AFT shoveled $100,000 each into the Color of Change PAC; National Action Network; the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation; and $200,000 into the Center for American Progress.

The Democratic Governors Association collected $600,000.

NEA delivered $106,146 to the Alliance for Justice; $500,000 to the Center for American Progress; and $75,000 to the Tides Center, a “progressive incubator” tightly linked to left-wing billionaire George Soros.

NEA is also big on GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. It received $30,000 to brainwash kids into sexual perversion.

NEA dumped $60,000 in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, another arm of the well-funded Lavender Lobby bent on recruiting kids.

While the unions put all that effort into funding leftist causes, math and reading scores in urban schools suffered, the data show.

In April, the Wirepoints website reported, far-left Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker’s Illinois schools are graduating virtual illiterates.

“Our 2022 and 2023 data tables showing the dozens of Illinois schools where zero students are proficient in reading and math continue to make the rounds on social media.” the website reported:

But it’s time for an update now that the state’s 2024 Report Card data is out … and the results are still dismal.

In 2024, there were 80 Illinois schools where not a single student tested proficient in math and 24 schools where no student tested proficient in reading. In 2023, it was 67 and 32, respectively.

Incredibly, officials in those schools graduated nearly 70% of their students in 2024.

The website reported that nearly 20,000 kids attend the zero-proficiency schools. “Every single one of those children will struggle in life because they lack basic reading and math skills,” the website concluded.

Worse still is the tax money dumped into the schools with no results.

Dunbar Vocational Career Academy in Chicago “spends $26,834 in operational costs on each of its 366 students,” Wirepoints reported:

The Illinois State Board of Education declares the school “commendable,” the state’s 2nd-highest rating. Despite that, not a single student taking the SAT tested proficient in math and just 2% tested proficient in reading. And yet 72% of students there graduate.

Farther south is Harlan Community Academy HS, which spends nearly $35,000 per student. Not a single student there tested proficient in math or reading on the SAT in 2024. Yet Harlan’s graduation rate is 64%.

Amusingly, Pritzker bragged about schools in the Land of Lincoln on August 29.

“Turns out when you treat teachers well, invest in students, and focus on improving schools, you get real results,” he boasted:

Illinois now ranks third in the nation for our education system for a reason.

Maryland schools are barely better, Baltimore’s Fox45 reported last week.

Though scores for Math and English language arts are rising, they are still abysmal.

“Third through eighth grade students along with some high schoolers take the state exams in [English Language Arts] and math,” the station reported:

In math, 26.5% of students statewide who took the test scored proficient. This is up from 24.1% in 2024.

In English language arts, the outcomes are better. This year, 50.8% of students tested scored proficient — up from 48.4% in 2024. …

Baltimore City had the lowest ELA proficiencies in the state. Math proficiencies were second lowest.

That is not surprising.

As The New American reported in 2023, Fox 45’s Project Baltimore investigation found that students at 13 high schools failed a math proficiency test administered at 33 high schools last spring. “Not one student” tested proficient at the baker’s dozen, the station reported.

As well, 40 percent of the city’s high school “schools could not produce a single student doing math at grade level.”

The city schools’ website reported similar data for 2021-22. Just 5 percent of high school students were proficient in math. Of those, 43 percent were Asian and 26 percent were white. Just 5 percent of black and Hispanics tested proficient.