Even as the majority of Americans clamor for school choice and local control over education, the National Education Association and other teachers’ unions continue their efforts to indoctrinate children into radical leftist ideologies and turn them into good little activists for their causes.
Last weekend the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, held its 104th Annual Representative Assembly, but conspicuously dominating the conversations and speeches was political activism, not education.
The event kicked off with NEA President Becky Pringle’s melodramatic Keynote Address in which she railed against the Trump administration as a threat to democracy and called on members to engage in political activism and even opposition to the enforcement of federal immigration law.
Most notably, Pringle described the Supreme Court’s recent decisions as “despicable” and demanded that, among other things, NEA members “join with allies in acts of resistance.”
Though she didn’t name the case, she was almost certainly referring to the Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which it ruled that parents have the right to opt their young children out of lessons promoting LGBT concepts, including drag queens and bondage. Opposition to that opinion was prevalent at the NEA conference.
Though the NEA kept its votes private, some of them were leaked to school choice activist Corey DeAngelis, who posted pictures on X of some of the business items that were adopted by the NEA.
One of these votes seeks to thwart the Supreme Court’s ruling.
To accomplish this, the NEA allotted $209,025 to distribute a sample local school board resolution that protects teachers who are pushing LGBTQ+ lessons in the classroom and a “know your rights” document under the ruling. The money is also available to school boards that hold town halls on how to use school board resolutions; continue to “advocate for LGBTQ+ students”; and hold conferences to enhance member advocacy.
The adopted item states that actions “should assist educators in avoiding possible disciplinary action when teaching about LGBTQ+ history, materials, resources, books, etc. while at school/work.”
One business item was borderline apocalyptic in its condemnation of President Donald Trump.
“NEA pledges to defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism by using the term facism [sic] in NEA materials to correctly characterize Donald Trump’s programs and actions.”
The item continued, “The members and material resources of NEA must be committed to the defense of the democratic and educational conditions required by our hopes for a just society and the survival of civilization itself.”
Another item said that the NEA would oppose the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education as illegal, anti-democratic, and racist.
Meanwhile, the NEA allotted $34,500 to defend birthright citizenship. The item reads, “NEA defends birthright citizenship and opposes the attempt to revert to pre-civil rights movement – Jim Crow – legal concepts of ‘states rights’ in order to deny citizenship to the children of immigrants.”
NEA also opposed lawful immigration enforcement and allotted $32,500 to protect students who protest.
The item states, “NEA opposes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kidnapping of student leaders and supports students’ right to organize against ICE raids and deportations. We will protect our students’ right to free speech and defend their right to dissent and organize against Trump’s policies, including attacks against LGBTQ+ students, and against racism.”
NEA also specifically opposed the Trump administration’s actions in Los Angeles to deport illegal immigrant criminals and protect law enforcement who are being attacked by violent activists.
The item reads,
“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.
We stand with millions of activists and protesters of this movement in their defense of democracy, the unity of the country, free speech, civil rights, labor, independent trade union rights, due process, and the popular democratic norms of a constitution securing the sovereignty of ‘we the people.’”
Speeches at the assembly made clear that NEA sees the work of teachers and teachers’ unions as undeniably political.
2025 National Teacher of the Year Ashlie Crosson said in her speech that in only the last few years she realized “how deeply political our profession had always been.”
Crosson’s speech centered on one central theme, a baffling claim she learned from a UniServ representative at a school on how to engage in collective bargaining. She said the representative, Adam Weber, “repeated it again and again…until every one of us could recite it like a nursery rhyme.”
The claim, which he characterized as “the gospel,” was this: “What is good for educators is good for students.”
Crosson said it has since become her mantra in advocating for educators.
Andy Markus, the NEA’s 2025 National Education Support Professional of the Year, also focused on politics in his speech.
He said that from the age of three his parents involved him in the work of the NEA, taking him to rallies where he held up signs and handed out flyers.
Markus said that a student once confided in Markus that he was gay and wanted to practice coming out to him before trying to tell his parents.
“Our work is more than the responsibilities outlined in our job descriptions — it’s about fostering a community that students and staff feel proud to be part of; a community where everyone feels safe, healthy, included, and supported,” Markus stated. “Because every student and every educator should be able to learn and work in a school environment where they can be themselves, free from violence and any kind of bigotry.”
He added, “We have to be political, plain and simple. It’s the only way we can make real changes.”
DeAngelis told The Blaze that the conference shows how radical the public school system has become.
“We already knew that the NEA was basically an arm of the Democrat Party based on their campaign contributions,” he stated. “Nearly all of their political funding is funneled to Democrats’ campaign coffers every single election cycle, and we knew that the NEA supported Kamala Harris in the presidential election. But these resolutions take it up a notch.”
DeAngelis continued, “You really can’t make this stuff up. You have the nation’s largest teachers’ union, in their attempt to call the president a ‘fascist,’ misspell the word. It’s another bit of free advertising for school choice and homeschooling.”
He said the votes and their general position on politics should encourage parents to homeschool their children.
“Would you want these lunatics at the National Education Association like Becky Pringle teaching your kids?” DeAngelis asked. “Do you want them to help you raise your children? Do you want them to push back against everything you’re trying to do in the household? They’re trying to subvert the will of parents.”
Let’s cut through the grandstanding. The NEA is no defender of student rights or their basic academic needs.
Like other major teachers’ unions, it is a political grift machine seeking to maintain its monopoly on the minds of students and the tax dollars of parents.
The leaders of every single teachers’ union are, in fact, partisan idealogues that seek to indoctrinate children into radical leftist ideologies and turn them into good little activists for their causes.
This is not hyperbole. NEA President Pringle is currently serving as an at-large committee member for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), while Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), recently resigned from her DNC post after serving there for 23 years and helping push the party increasingly leftward.
Teachers’ unions and public school leaders stridently oppose school choice and Trump’s education policies, which are focused on returning control of academics back to local school boards and parents.
They want to keep their monopoly despite having utterly failed in the one job they’re supposed to be doing: educating students.
In Pennsylvania, the home state of both Pringle and NEA National Teacher of the Year Crosson, nearly 69 percent of 8th grade students can’t read or do math at grade level — a decline from already low pre-pandemic scores. All this despite the fact that the Keystone State spends $22,000 per student, the seventh highest amount in the country.
Pennsylvania is no outlier. Public schools across the country are criminally failing students in large part because they have very little competition and no incentive to perform better. But it’s also because they aren’t trying to actually educate children in the basics — they are instead using precious classroom time and resources indoctrinating students in social justice, critical race theory, radical gender theory, anti-American grievance, and general lawlessness.
This is nothing new for the NEA, which has long and openly touted Marxist policies and platforms, including abortion on demand and putting pornographic materials into school libraries, while refusing to commit to a renewed focus on academics.
There is one thing we can agree on though.
In her speech accepting the National Teacher of the Year honor, Crosson said, “Protecting education is how we protect our democracy.”
That is absolutely true.
To ensure a future that defends the principles of freedom, small government, and individual responsibility, we must educate children effectively — but it’s in the “what” of the teaching that makes the difference. Children must be taught to think critically and to excel through reading, writing, and mathematics. Students must also be taught history and civics and to defend and uphold the Constitution.
Without that foundational knowledge, our nation will never break free of the decline our younger generations are experiencing, generations that have been taught to be community organizers reliant on a gargantuan government.
Where Crosson is wrong is in her thesis. What’s good for teachers’ unions, or even teachers, is not necessarily what is good for students.
In fact, what enriches the teachers’ unions and increases their iron grip on education is not what is best for students.
What is best for students is a world in which parents no longer must pay a tax for and send their child to a failing school run by members of one political party.
The only way that will happen is for parents to break the hold that teachers’ unions have on their children. How? Vote for pro-child and pro-academic school board members. Attend school board meetings. Educate your community on the dangers of the NEA and other teachers’ unions and their ongoing indoctrination in public schools. Advocate for school choice.
This is the only way for the next generation of students to succeed and flourish. Schools must be returned to their core mission: educating children.
PHOTO: President Becky Pringle gives the keynote address at the National Education Association annual representative assembly in Portland, Oregon, on July 3, 2025. CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot
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