The teacher union leadership is in a collective snit after it became clear that Donald Trump would be reelected as U.S. president. American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten stated in a press release on Nov. 9, “At this moment, the country is more divided than ever, and our democracy is in jeopardy. Last night, we saw fear and anger win.”
National Education Association boss Becky Pringle was somber, posting on Facebook, “We woke up today to a world that feels darker than it did yesterday. I hear the fear about the safety of our families and communities. I feel the profound anxiety for the future of our country. I see the worry, anger, and heartbreak. But despair is not the answer.”
Pringle’s post was widely contested in the comments section, however. Typifying the pushback, educator Laurie Speed posted, “I wish that you would not assume that all of your members are liberals. Many voted for Trump, and they are feeling optimistic. I wish NEA were bipartisan. The education of our children is important to both parties. As educators, we can set the example for our students to follow regarding how to collaborate with others whose opinions differ from ours.”
Speed nails it! Ignoring its rank and file, teacher union leadership is far left and has been for years. When NEA president Reg Weaver spoke at the Democratic Convention in 2008, his opening words were, “I am here today on behalf of 3.2 million NEA members to tell you why we support Barack Obama for president of the United States.”
It sounded as if every member of the NEA was backing Obama. Then, in his last sentence, he left no doubt. “That, my friends, is why the 3.2 million members of the National Education Association are organized, energized, and mobilized to help elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States of America.”
Yet, the same Reg Weaver stated a few years before that one-third of NEA membership is Republican, one-third Democrat, and one-third “other.”
On a similar note, Mike Antonucci explained in 2010 that NEA members lean no further to the left than any other large group of Americans. “The national union conducts periodic internal surveys to ascertain member attitudes on a host of issues. These surveys are never made public, and results are tightly controlled, even within the organization. The 2005 NEA survey, consistent with previous results, found that members are slightly more conservative (50%) than liberal (43%) in political philosophy.”
More recently, a 2017 EdWeek poll found that 43% of teachers described themselves as politically moderate, 29% as liberal, and 27% as conservative.
No matter. Current NEA president Becky Pringle gave a speech—or more accurately, a screech—to the flock at the yearly NEA convention this past July. Among other things, in a reference to conservatives, she bellowed, “Today, they sprout as vitriol toward our profession; increased marginalization of Black, brown, AAPI, and Indigenous communities; rising hatred toward our LGBTQ+ siblings. The seeds of hate manifest themselves as attacks against our freedom to teach; our students’ freedom to learn.”
She wasn’t done. “They’ve mushroomed into the poisonous spores of a stacked Supreme Court—one that continues to render decisions that attack, diminish, and disregard the needs and lived experiences of far too many Americans. And now, the same court gave corporations the power to attack the critical services Americans have relied on for generations and laid the foundation to give Donald Trump immunity for his crimes against Americans and America. Through it all, undeterred and unwavering, we stand as one collective, clear in our resolve: We won’t go back!”
Not surprisingly, in the 2024 election cycle, teachers’ unions contributed $44,935,088 to political candidates nationwide, with 98.43% going to Democrats and a paltry 0.89% to Republicans.
And it’s not just the national teachers’ unions that have a left-wing agenda.
Of the 80 State Assembly seats in California up for grabs, the California Teachers Association recommended 79 Democratic candidates, one no recommendation, and nary a Republican. For Congress, Democrats got 40 recommendations and Republicans zero.
Even local unions get into the act. The Illinois Policy Institute reports that just 17% of Chicago Teachers Union spending is dedicated to representing its members, with most of the dues money going to support candidates and causes that align with the union’s radical political agenda.
After the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which was labeled the “deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust,” the United Teachers of Los Angeles was silent about the bloodbath. But at the same time, the union labeled Israel an “apartheid state” and “occupier.” UTLA doubled down, passing a resolution last month backing an arms embargo against Israel proposed by avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Additionally, UTLA’s Executive Board permitted multiple re-introductions of a motion criticizing Israel while advocating for the protection of the Hamas attackers without concern for the victims of the October 7 massacre.
In the recent election, UTLA also endorsed Kahllid Al-Alim for a seat on the LAUSD school board. Al-Alim’s social media accounts, fraught with anti-Semitic balderdash, featured blood-libel and conspiracy theories, and an outrageous accusation against Jews for “collaborating with and even financing such racial terrorists as the Ku Klux Klan.”
However, after an intense backlash, UTLA pulled support for Al-Alim but not until contributing more than $700,000 in membership dues to his campaign. Thankfully, the odious Al-Alim lost.
With all this happening, the question becomes, why would any teacher who is right of center, centrist, apolitical—or in Los Angeles, Jewish—willingly pay money to a teachers union? When teachers first sign up, most think that their dues are going to an organization that exists to protect them. But nothing could be further from the truth.
It’s worth noting that when teachers join a union, they are actually joining three. In addition to their local, they also fork over money to the national union and state affiliates. Currently, the NEA siphons $213 and in California, for example, the CTA takes $816 a year. In Los Angeles, UTLA tacks on another $120 for a total of $1,149. In Chicago, teachers now pay the union more than $1,400 per year.
Liability insurance is one of the only decent benefits the teachers’ unions offer. However, teachers can instead join the Association of American Educators or Christian Educators Association International—professional organizations—and get better coverage at a much lower cost.
Additionally, The Freedom Foundation announced in July that it will launch the Teacher Freedom Network in January 2025 for teachers who want to leave their union. This organization, too, will offer options that unions typically offer, like liability insurance.
It’s a shame that more educators don’t recognize the downside of being in a union. If teachers stopped paying dues, they would be better off, the unions would be less powerful, and children and society would greatly benefit.
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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 strictly his own.
You need not ask why liberalism, DEI and the woke counter culture is being propagated and how it rapidly spread throughout news media, social media, the military, all federal, state and local bureaucracies including the DOJ, the legal profession, medical professions, NGOs and just about everything else imaginable and unimaginable. The answer is hidden in plain sight and can’t be missed by the unaffected. Among the affected eyes can be wide open but they might as well be shut. In medicine there is a condition which is refered to as cortical blindness. The ophthalmic structures and the associated neural tracts are intact and functional. What does not function is the neocortex where the second cranial nerve arrives to deliver the information it acquired. The brain is where cognition takes place and those who refuse to see are as blind as those without eyes. It is the Department of Education, circa 1979, where it all began and it has now become as aggressive as the artificial intelligence described in the StarTrek series called the Borg.
It was Bill Bennett who wanted to be the Education Czar, and many others who saw nothing of what should have been obvious at the time. A Federal bureaucracy that controls all of education in the entire country is the perfect place for public service unions to prosper and indoctrinate young minds looking for structure, meaning and purpose. The damn thing, created by Carter, should have been destroyed in its infancy by Reagan. It is no different than an alien life form that would be best destroyed in its infancy before any development occurs. Now, like all federal bureaucracies, it has become top heavy and infested with a parasitic population that is, like all bureaucracies, about the closest thing to immorality as is possible to obtain. It needs to end and just the way the SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade and Plessy v. Ferguson the country needs to recognize that it is a Republic and that Federalism is the most most powerful example of the separation of powers which Montesquieu and the Framers had in mind. States will incur both education differences and problems but at least people can escape the differences and problems by moving. When the entire county is subject to the auspices of a central education authority the bias of the few will control an outcome for the many. Nothing needs to be terminated more than does the Department of Education and along with it the public service unions that control it. It represents the root of a tree whose fruit has poisoned every other aspect of government along with the American culture itself. If Donald Trump does only one thing eliminating the federal education bureaucracy would be the thing that would result in the most corrective and initiate the most lasting consequences. It should never have been created in the first place. It is why the country experienced the damage the last four years incurred.
I think the title as well as the author’s premise for the article are wrong.
The leaders - are a reflection of - not beholding to - their leaders - if the poor, widdle, union sheep - actually weren’t behind, supportive of - even if apparently not overly and vociferously - supportive of these vile Karen Harridans that lead them - then they wouldn’t be there in charge having been elected would they now?
So - if I were the author? I would go back and examine my fundamental - misguided premise and have re-written the entire thing to be more consistent with an actionable premise that put blame where it belongs - and reveals in all is ugliness - the fascist minded, FemiNazi sisterhood - that is the real problem with American education.
This article puts me in mind of the too oft brain-dead Sean Hannity saying, “It’s not the good rank and file FBI agents that are to blame.”
(For all the treasonous, subversion of the government at the behest of traitors like Obama, Comey and company.)
Thank you for the history lesson, very much. I just posted my own little missive in response to this article - be it ever so humble and meek, mild-mannered in nature as usual my posits tend to be!
I just dealt with that when someone chastised me for assuming that a group of wealthy women helping animals at a farm shelter are liberals. I live and work under the assumption that at least 40% of the people I see are likely to be liberal and if they are women, teachers, cat ladies or do-gooders the likelihood rises. That’s ok as long as they do good work and I don’t really mind if I’m looked at as a Nazi, racist, xenophobic reprobate because I developed a hard shell decades ago. It only makes a difference when they have positions of power or when they vote. If they are helping homeless abandoned animals I find that admirable because we need people like that. They frequently believe that conservatives don’t have compassion and that they have a monopoly on benevolence. Unfortunately when they vote they vote for people who create economies where people can’t afford to feed themselves or their pets. Consequently they unknowingly create the very problems that need the compassion they try to so amply apply. And they often hate you for pointing that out. I have often had to help the very people who are quick to do malice and damage to others they don’t like but only because we have a common cause and when I am called upon I am the only possible remedy they have left.
I have become over time very circumspect and jealous of my time and efforts and to whom I give comfort and solace (always liked that word solace).
Which is why - when it comes to my “boys” I mentor I am Draconian - willing to give them if I perceive ability and possibilities in them - the benefit of the doubt and risk the very exhausting building up trust with a young man protocols that are part of, go with the territory when considering whether to mentor them and also with an eye to having them work with me - but that’s always a way down the totem pole consideration.
I just remember how when I was there ages I never had anyone whom I met who took this kind of benevolent, no untoward agenda at all - approach to me and tried to help me avoid the pitfalls we all fall into and have to climb out of as young men.
But - doing this is a two-way street and if the feedback needed to show me that they are serious and worth it is lacking - I drop them like a hot potato.
But that was then - this is now - given I am not taking on new “recruits” into The Firm - so to speak.
The last one arrived awhile ago - he’s in Nigeria at the moment but ultimately will be winging his way here - and will be working as an integral part of my business and with the other guys.
I said to him the other day, “Don’t let this scare you. But of all the guys you are the one who thinks the most like me.” SMS
He’s frighteningly intelligent - taught himself to read at the age of 5 - is 31 now; has a masters in biology - presently teaching elementary school (a good but limiting use of his talents).
The point I am getting at - re the cat ladies involved in rescuing animals in distress is. I agree that really nice that they want to help and are doing a good deed but?
Personally, I will not offer “comfort and solace” to those I perceive to be terminally infected with the Mind Virus because, frankly, they cannot be trusted given their true allegiance is to the insanity thereof.
I know, I am sounding as though I am lacking in a willingness to be understanding - only true, though, with respect to those lost souls who are happy to be lost and for whom there is no hope of ever being happy.
H. L. Mencken had a saying re Puritanism that is equally apropos the IL-Liberal liberals:
H.L. Mencken, Chrestomathy
Good Reads