Copyright Baltimore News
An education watchdog group is flagging two high power teachers' unions — the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (ATF) — for diverting resources from classrooms, overriding parental consent and prioritizing left-wing ideologies. American Parents Coalition accused the two largest teachers' unions of failing to meet their own missions of “excellence in public school education” and “high quality education" to instead focus on left-wing political activism. Since 2022, both NEA and ATF have funneled more than $43 million to left-leaning political advocacy groups. During the 2024 election cycle, an AFT PAC raised more than $13 million with 98% of those funds going to Democratic candidates. $1.5 million of those funds went to federal congressional candidate. Leadership from both teachers' unions have been verbally outspoken against the Trump administration. NEA President Becky Pringle called the Supreme Court's decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which allowed parents to opt their children out of being exposed to books on gender and sexuality, a "threat to democracy," eroding the authority of an educator. In addition, NEA has published a "Schools in Trasnsition" guide, which promotes transgender ideology as a topic discussed in classrooms. NEA has also endorsed that biological males be permitted to compete in women's sports. In NEA's 2025 Handbook, the teacher's union downplays the Holocaust, attacks homeschooling and school choice programs, embraces preferred names and pronouns, and harms on white supremacy as the "root cause of institutional racism, structural racism, and white privilege."
