Half of the public thinks teachers unions are more interested in protecting their union jobs than in the quality of education. They’re right. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers prioritize unionized adults over students, pour vast resources into electing politicians who promise to do their bidding, and strike when their demands aren’t met.
Both of the national teachers unions mobilized for November’s election during their summer conventions. NEA President Becky Pringle began her union’s summer meeting with an off-the-rails speech, celebrating recent strikes and repeatedly yelling that union members must “do this work” and “win all the things.” The “work” is, of course, aggressively campaigning for union-endorsed candidates, including Vice President Kamala Harris.
Pringle has pledged to pour resources into campaigns “from the school board level all the way up to the presidency.” The NEA’s campaign war chest is formidable. Politico reported in 2020 that the NEA ran “a massive member campaign for [President Joe] Biden with digital organizing, phone banking, texting, virtual rallies and car caravans.” During its last reported fiscal year, the NEA spent $50.1 million on political campaigns and lobbying and directed a considerable portion of the $126.3 million allocated to “contributions, gifts, and grants” to political causes.
Normally, Pringle keeps a low profile — her latest raucous rant aside. In contrast, AFT President Randi Weingarten revels in the spotlight and regularly reveals her political agenda. Weingarten used her speech at her union’s summer convention to praise Harris repeatedly, 17 times in fact, and instruct AFT members to vote “down this existential threat to democracy.” She warned that autocracy, tyranny, and fascism would result from union members not campaigning and voting her way.
Although Weingarten’s speech lasted for almost an hour, she never mentioned the pervasive learning loss, chronic absenteeism, and discipline concerns that directly affect AFT members and plague the nation’s public schools. Weingarten lamented that “fear, anxiety, and despair have taken hold across our country,” but she neglected to address the despair teachers feel while struggling to educate students who continue to fall further behind.
Assessment provider NWEA recently reported that “achievement gaps … continue to widen, and in some cases, now surpass what we had previously deemed as the low point.” The average student requires more than four additional months of school to reach pre-pandemic achievement levels. Alarmingly, eighth grade students are a year behind in math and reading.
At their conventions this summer, the teachers unions not only ignored the academic needs of struggling students during their summer meetings, but they geared up for disruptive strikes during the school year. Both unions voted in favor of “strike readiness” and made plans to “bring all necessary resources to bear” to “prepare for and organize a strike.”
Strikes harm students. Union leaders know that shutting students out of schools when strikes drag on causes further learning loss, but they don’t care. The Portland Association of Teachers forced students to miss school for most of last November during a prolonged strike. Public employee strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, but numerous Massachusetts Teachers Association affiliates have closed schools with strikes in recent years, including an 11-day strike in Newton in January. In Ohio, the Youngstown Education Association launched a 27-day strike during the first month of school last year, likely worsening students’ already abysmal achievement scores — 88% of sixth graders were not proficient in math in 2023 — and 59% chronic absenteeism rate.
The AFT summer convention’s “Real Solutions” theme sounds relatively harmless and hokey. But the convention’s primary “solutions” were to fire up union minions to campaign and to “prepare to use labor action to fight.” Union critics can laugh at the NEA’s annual meeting shutting down due to NEA’s staff union’s strike, but the NEA’s 3 million members are following Pringle’s orders to “win all the things” and pouring funds into union-endorsed candidates. Teaching was the top profession to donate to the Harris-Walz campaign last month.
Union leaders regularly laud Biden and Harris as the “most pro-union administration in modern history.” Pro-union politicians follow unions’ orders and either make excuses or look the other way as students are harmed.
As unions and their favored candidates aggressively campaign this fall, parents should pay attention to the impact election results could have on their children.
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Ginny Gentles is a senior fellow with the Education Freedom Center at the Independent Women’s Forum.