Do parents have the right to know what their children are being taught in public school?
Parents say yes; teachers say no.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple. The description of the latter party can be tweaked to “teachers unions” — although you don’t hear many individual teachers bucking the union line — but the dichotomy remains: parents want to know what’s going on in their kids’ classrooms, and teachers, administrators, and their union bosses would rather not tell them.
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The nation’s largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), declined by at least 59,000 members during the 2021-2022 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) disclosure reports.
The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, lost 40,107 members while the AFT, the nation’s second largest teachers union, declined by 19,078, according to the DOL reports. The decline comes as public schools added 95,000 educators from September 2021 to 2022.
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Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could reverse the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, in which SCOTUS asserted that the use of an applicant’s race as a factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The current case specifically cites the use of race in the admissions process at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, maintain that Harvard violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “which bars entities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race, because Asian American applicants are less likely to be admitted than similarly qualified white, Black, or Hispanic applicants.”
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The New Jersey chapter of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), published an ad labeling parents who speak out at school board meetings against Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender identity lessons as “extremists.”
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The country’s largest teachers’ union suggested a book about kneeling for the national anthem as part of its August 2022 summer reading list, according to its website.
The National Education Association (NEA) listed the book “Why We Fly” by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal, which features marijuana use and tells of two girls on the cheerleading squad who take a knee for the national anthem after being inspired by a football star protesting in the media, according to the website. Discussion questions and related resources on athlete activism are also provided by the NEA to pair with the reading.
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At a time when school shootings are a concern for many Americans, serious violence incidents are also up in schools across the nation, reports two recent studies.
One study, from the National Center for Education Statistics, shows a 35% increase in serious violence incidents in K-12 public schools from the 2015-16 school year to 2019-20. Serious violence incidents include rape, attempted rape, sexual assault other than rape, threatened rape, physical attacks, fights with a weapon, threat of physical attack with a weapon, and robbery with or without a weapon.
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The National Education Association (NEA), the country’s largest teacher’s union, committed to spending more than $140,000 to research and target opposition groups at a convention July 3-6, according to Education Week.
NEA will research and create fact sheets on at least 25 organizations “that are actively working to diminish a student’s right to honesty in education, freedom of sexual and gender identity, and teacher autonomy,” according to a convention business item seen by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The resolution was approved for $140,625 at the NEA’s convention last week, and the fact sheets that will be distributed to NEA state affiliates, according to Education Week.
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As a teacher, I attended the National Education Association convention last week, and my worst fears were confirmed.
Public schools are no longer a safe place for families who hold traditional values or for families who believe gender (as in male/female binary) is biologically determined.
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The president of the nation’s largest teachers’ union told union delegates at the start of the Representative Assembly (RA) Sunday that 2016 was the year of a “fateful election,” one that made clear the U.S. Supreme Court would become “radicalized.”
In her keynote address Sunday in Chicago, National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle targeted former President Donald Trump for his choices in appointing Supreme Court justices.
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The number of teachers in the U.S. has increased from 2013 to 2020 while the number of students has decreased, according to data from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest public-school union.
While total enrollment has dropped 1.4% over those seven years, there has been a 2.3% increase in the number of public-school teachers.
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American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was paid nearly half a million dollars during the 2021-2022 school year, a report from Americans for Fair Treatment stated Wednesday. Weingarten raked in six-figures while simultaneously pushing for schools to stay shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With teacher’s union dues, Weingarten is paid $449,562, the Americans for Fair Treatment report stated. Weingarten’s salary is about seven times more than the average high school teacher makes as of 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor.
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Elementary and high schools throughout the country this week are having children participate in Black Lives Matter at School’s “Week of Action,” using lesson plan “resources” based on the activist organization’s core principles that seek to disrupt Western family structure, and teach children to affirm the “transgender” and “queer” lifestyles.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) at School has provided a toolkit for schools and teachers with a curriculum that features a movie for different grade bands matched to “the 13 guiding principles of the BLM movement.”
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A worker rights group is calling out two powerful teachers unions, claiming that they “hold the education of kids hostage” in a press release.
Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF), told the Daily Caller News Foundation that teachers unions like the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are taking advantage of a labor law provision passed in the 1930s for the private sector.
“In several states across the country, union officials, specifically teachers’ union officials, have been granted a really unique privilege called exclusive monopoly bargaining,” Mix said, adding that former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt opposed granting such privileges to public-sector unions while in office.
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This week’s Golden Horseshoe once again goes to the U.S. Department of Education for allowing school districts to use pandemic relief funds for pay raises and bonuses for teachers despite the funds being appropriated to reopen schools safely.
Schools nationwide received $190 billion through three relief packages passed. Of that total, the largest sum, $122 billion, was from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.
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According to a new report, the National Education Association, which is America’s largest teacher’s union, has canceled its annual convention that was set to be held in Texas in July.
“The union took the unprecedented step of canceling its Texas plans due to its displeasure with a series of bills that came out of a special session of the state legislature having to do with voting, abortion and critical race theory, internal NEA sources say,” according to The 74 million. “Several state affiliates had threatened not to send their delegates to the convention if it were held in Texas.”
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The Democratic National Committee (DNC) tweeted that the most common DNC donor-reported occupation in 2021 is teacher.
The tweet sparked widespread mockery online, with commentators pointing out that teachers’ widespread alignment with Democrats is a root cause of conservatives’ distrust in public education.
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Integrating activism in the K-12 classroom is the trickle-down of liberal bias in higher education. The results are seen as educators mirror anti-racist trainings and social justice workshops, which evolved from college campuses.
For instance, University of California, Los Angeles’ Teacher Education Program (TEP), trains “social justice educators” and follows an “anti-racist and social justice agenda.”
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The National Education Association (NEA) teachers union threatened to publicly criticize President Joe Biden’s administration if it did not implement stricter mask guidance, according to internal emails obtained by watchdog group Americans for Public Trust and provided to Fox News.
Following a statement published by the NEA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) specified that regardless of vaccination status, masks should be worn by everyone in schools, Fox News reported. The NEA originally sent a drafted statement to White House officials criticizing the CDC’s guidance, but ended up publishing a statement with a milder tone, according to the emails.
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A large number of school principals in Minnesota have formed a coalition pledging to “de-center Whiteness” in education.
The 162 principals call themselves the “Good Trouble Principals,” a nod to the late civil rights icon and congressman John Lewis, and say they are “a loose collection of local principals bound together by a commitment to changing our nation’s future by engaging in better, more equitable education practices.”
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Randi Weingarten, the gaffe-prone president of the American Federation of Teachers has outdone herself, and that isn’t easy. In a series of seven open letters over the years, I have playfully chided the union boss about her trove of inane and bizarre musings. But now she has jumped the proverbial shark.
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The National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor and teachers’ union in the U.S., has voted to spread critical race theory as parents across the nation are fighting against it.
The union is preparing to commit $127,600 to advance critical race theory, according to the Epoch Times.
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Lesson plans are a teacher’s daily guide for what students need to learn and how it will be taught. Because educators are always looking for new and interesting ways to engage kids, I have a few ideas that can be used to further student knowledge.
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For groups like Professional Educators of Tennessee, it is simple. We must advance public education without the divisive tribalism of partisan politics, and we will only get involved in education related issues. The union never stops in its quest for power and control over public education.
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Most educators are not buying into a more militant, progressive labor movement beholden to the far left. Educators nationally often spend hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of dollars per year on union dues. There are much more cost-effective alternatives, like Professional Educators of Tennessee. That is what makes groups like Professional Educators of Tennessee different. We offer a modern approach to educator representation, legal protection and unmatched educational advocacy, as well as promoting professionalism, collaboration and excellence without a partisan agenda. There are non-union alternatives for educators in other states as well. Nobody wants to return the 1950’s.
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At the recent National Education Association (NEA) Annual Meeting, where Tennessee Education Association (TEA) representatives participated along with other affiliates across the country, the highly partisan NEA took strong positions against immigration reform and Republicans in general. They even gave an award to controversial former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick to…
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JC Bowman writes: “There are many other completely, independent non-union organizations now in America that represents public school educators, giving them a clear, non-union voice. This means they do not spend a large portion of their lobbying efforts and their political funds focusing on bills and causes that fall outside the scope of education.”
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by Steve Gill In a 2014 article Mission America noted that the National Education Association (NEA) Teachers Union was more extreme than ever. Beginning in the 1960s, the NEA began a progression of increased political activity, largely left-leaning and almost exclusively pro-Democrat Party. Today, NEA’s annual budget is around $367…
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