GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY INSTITUTE

Teachers Unions: From Academics to Activists

How Teachers Unions Reward Insiders, Promote Political Activism, and Push a Divisive Agenda

January 10, 2022

Key Findings

No U.S institution has been affected more by current events than the K-12 education system. The COVID pandemic wreaked havoc on the mechanics of delivering education, while the social justice movement sparked a debate over what should be taught in the classroom. The convergence of these two issues turned traditionally mundane school board meetings into a platform for frustrated parents and often pitted these parents against administrators and teachers. While parents voiced their concerns about COVID policies, critical race theory, and gender issues to their local schools, the powerful teachers unions pressed a national campaign to stake out positions on these same controversial issues. The actions taken by the unions go far beyond their traditional mission of bargaining for better pay, benefits, and improved working conditions for teachers. For example, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) passed resolutions that supported Democratic presidential candidates and advocated for liberal positions on politically divisive issues. The leader of the National Education Association (NEA) admitted that the union’s mission had been expanded to include social activism. Expenditures by both unions reflected these priorities, going exclusively to support progressive causes and candidates. To understand the effects of this expanded role of teachers unions, GAI analyzed almost two years of resolutions by the AFT. We also researched the backgrounds and the public statements made by the influential leaders of both the AFT and the NEA. 

This is what we found:

• Randi Weingarten, the leader of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) since 2008, dramatically increased the union’s political spending since taking office.1 According to the Government Accountability Institute’s analysis of campaign finance records, AFT campaign contributions spiked from $3.7 million in 2008 to $20 million during the 2020 election cycle.

• Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the leader of the National Education Association (NEA), confirmed to Education Week that the “core business” of the NEA is no longer pensions and health insurance, but social activism and political lobbying.

• Eskelsen Garcia stated that leadership changes at her union have allowed it to focus on broader social issues like immigration policy and racial justice. She justifies this expansion of union activism because it reflects the leadership’s deeply held personal and political beliefs.2 

The Union Dues of Teachers Now Fund Radical Social Justice Groups that Don’t Reflect Mainstream American Values

• Data from the US Department of Labor reveal that between 2006 and 2020, AFT and NEA donated approximately $726,200 to GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network). GSLEN bills itself as a “leading national organization working to guarantee LGBTQ+ students safe and affirming education.”3
 

• Research indicates that over the last three years, the AFT and NEA have donated approximately $3 million to pass through groups that then fund Black Lives Matters.  

GAI Analysis Reveals Union Leadership Focuses on Electing Democrats and Advocating for Left-Wing Issues

• GAI’s analysis of AFT resolutions shows the most frequent topics discussed in AFT resolutions in 2020 and 2021 were COVID-19, elections, race, violence, and criminal justice, followed by education.

• In 2020 alone, there were 227 separate mentions of “elections” contained in fourteen different resolutions that were published on the AFT website. Likewise, there were 165 separate mentions of “COVID-19” in twenty-one different resolutions; 111 mentions of “violence” in fourteen different resolutions; 93 mentions of “race” (excluding discussions of racial discrimination, which add a further 32 separate mentions) in 16 different resolutions; and 49 separate mentions of “police” and “criminal justice” across eight different resolutions. In 2020, a total of thirty-four resolutions were published by the AFT.

• When COVID-19 is mentioned in AFT resolutions, it is often mentioned in advocacy for policies that expand the role of the federal government in public education and implement broad reforms in US education. During the Covid Pandemic, Teachers Unions Seized an Opportunity to Change Education
 

• America’s two largest teachers unions used the Covid-19 pandemic as the pretext to push for radical changes to public education and exploited the crisis to financially benefit powerful elites with close ties to their leadership.

• AFT and NEA both adopted the leftist trope of “Reimagining Education” to frame their wide-ranging demands for school transformation. According to internal union leadership communication, unions began advocating for global pandemic solutions that require harvesting and sharing vast amounts of personal data on students and increasing the number of “wrap-around services” provided through schools.
 

• AFT President Randi Weingarten wasted a million dollars of union funds on counterfeit Covid supplies from China, and funneled loads of cash to her cronies in New York.

Unions Now Direct Schools to Promote and Advocate Controversial Issues

• Teachers unions disseminate radical curricula to teachers and schools, creating new professional standards that encourage controversy among teachers and families. Union initiatives encouraging activism in the classroom tie the hands of those teachers who wish to remain neutral and objective among their colleagues, their students, and their community.

• Despite the persistent argument that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is not taught in schools below the college level, many of the educational programs addressing racial equity and racial justice in public schools push such narratives. Primarily, students are being taught that the United States is inherently racist and that skin color determines the institutional hierarchy of oppressed and oppressor in which people are placed.

• Teachers unions encouraged teachers to intervene in the sexual and gender identities of students, especially during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. These interventions include establishing private online communications with students, then concealing these communications from parents and other family members in the home. For many teachers, this could expose them to conflict with parents, a betrayal of the family’s trust, and even legal liability.

• Advancing radical gender politics in the classroom has harmed teachers, raising tension between teachers and their communities that spills over into lawsuits and public shouting matches. Teachers unions continue to push for the expansion of teacher responsibility in the life of the child, alienating parents and making the real work of education more difficult.

Unions Want to Expand the Influence of Liberal Policies Through “Community School” Programs

• The idea of Community Schools has been around for over three decades in the US, but under the Biden Administration financial support for this alternative schooling model has increased nearly fourteen-fold, from $30 million to more than $400 million per year. A bill called the Full-Service Community School Expansion Act of 2021 in Congress seeks to spend $3.65 billion over the next five
years on community schools.

• The major reason for this expansion is the teachers unions, which advocate for community schools using three primary tactics: 1) lobbying federal and local governments, 2) partnering with union insiders to provide wraparound services, and 3) “bargaining for the common good.”

• The most dangerous component of the community school model is the unprecedented amount and array of personal data collected from our nation’s most vulnerable and needy students through wraparound services. For example, Kneomedia Limited is a digital edutainment company that partners with New York City schools. One of Kneomedia’s crucial features is data capture and analysis, which provides immediate measurable results for schools, teachers, and parents to track students’ progress. This data harvesting also produces highly detailed biometric data on students that was not previously available.

Teachers Union Leadership

An organization’s leadership sets the tone and agenda for its activities. Leadership provides personality and a face to the organizational mission. For teachers unions, recent leadership has consisted of big personalities like Randi Weingarten (President of the AFT), Lily Eskelsen Garcia (former President of the NEA [2014-2020]), and Rebecca Pringle (current President of the NEA). These women style themselves as trailblazers, activists, and guardians of education. They use their public face to speak to and for educators across the country. Their beliefs and words move and inspire the members of their unions. Are they doing their best to serve American educators? Do they prioritize the original mission of their organizations? Do they positively contribute to American education.

Randi Weingarten

AFT President was born and raised in the New York area.4 Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten is an attorney who began her union career representing the President of the New York City’s United Federation of Teachers affiliate from 1986 to 1998. From there, she rose to become president of the American Federation of Teachers in 2008. According to her profile on the AFT website, education reform has been central to her work as the national union’s president. These reforms include drastic changes to teacher evaluations and a sharp increase in federal funds and involvement in public education.5 Reflecting Weingarten’s aggressive push for more federal involvement in public schools, AFT has transformed into a more aggressive political fundraiser. Influence Watch, a project of the conservative leaning Capital Research Center, has reported that under Randi Weingarten’s leadership, political spending by the American Federation of Teachers rose dramatically.6 AFT affiliates — such as the AFT Solidarity PAC — increased their political campaign contributions from a collective $3.7 million when Weingarten took office in 2008, to nearly $20 million in 2020. More than 99 percent of this money is diverted to Democratic campaigns and political organizations, according to OpenSecrets.7 Much of the politics and many of the policies pushed by Randi Weingarten detract from the original purpose of the union, which was to bargain collectively to increase the pay and protect the rights of workers in education and other public services. Rather than focus on pension issues and protection against mistreatment, Randi Weingarten’s agenda has emphasized radical changes in education that do not serve students or teachers. Her focus on promoting politically charged curricula often brings teachers and parents into conflict. It may even have cost Democratic candidates in critical elections. In Virginia’s gubernatorial election in 2021, many observers attributed the victory of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, a political newcomer, over previous incumbent Democrat Terry McAuliffe to the divisive and sometimes dishonest messaging Weingarten and other teachers union leaders pushed. After months of denying on Twitter her role in keeping the schools closed and denigrating the role of parents in the classroom, her public stumping for Terry McAuliffe may have been the last straw for frustrated Virginia parents.8 By focusing so heavily on political messaging, Weingarten has shifted the AFT from teachers’ working conditions and towards unpopular policies that voters do not support. Thus, even for the teachers who support the Democratic push to expand federal funding of schools, Weingarten’s broad involvement in social politics has begun to sabotage their efforts to vote friendly candidates into office, even after earlier success in the 2020 presidential campaign. Weingarten also brings controversy on herself. For example, according to a lawsuit filed by the Mississippi chapter of the AFT against Randi Weingarten and the national AFT, Weingarten covered for her close friend Akemi Stout, the corrupt head of its Jackson-based local. Stout mismanaged the local’s finances and paid union money to a business he owned, the lawsuit alleges. Weingarten assailed the lawsuit as a “personality conflict,” and accused the local affiliate of wasting dues money.9 Furthermore, Weingarten and her politically connected wife, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, have been outspoken in support of New York City political candidates who are pro-union, but who have also faced multiple, credible accusations of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and misconduct. Most recently, Influence Watch reported that Weingarten was widely panned online for her support of Alphonso David, the former president of the Human Rights Campaign. David was fired from his job after a report by the New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, revealed he had helped Andrew Cuomo and his office attempt to discredit one of Cuomo’s accusers in the sexual harassment probe against the then-Governor of New York.10 That report led to Cuomo’s resignation from office. This was just months after Kleinbaum wrote an opinion piece in the New York Daily News that encouraged readers to believe women who make claims that they have been sexually mistreated – except for those made against Scott Stringer (AFT’s preferred and endorsed NYC mayoral candidate). Kleinbaum’s article spends more time explaining what an altruistic politician Scott Stringer is than discussing the accusations against him, or explaining why those accusations lack credibility.11 As leader of an organization whose primary mission is advocacy against injustice and inequality for workers, Randi Weingarten seems unafraid to compromise on moral propriety and to permit hypocrisy and injustice when it suits her political ends.

Weingarten also oversaw the development of Share My Lesson, a database where teachers can share their curriculum material and lesson plans.12 The database features a large collection of lessons that focus on the politically charged topics of race, gender, and equity.13 Some of the most recent featured collections include “Indigenous People Lesson Plans and Resources,” which discusses how to celebrate indigenous people’s day instead of Columbus Day; “Teaching about Race and Racism: Lesson Plans and Resources,” which includes teaching resources such as “What Does It Mean to ‘Defund the Police’?;” “Talking About Race and Privilege Lesson Plan for Middle and High School Students;” and “Anti-Racism Resources for Racial Literacy,” which includes lesson plans drawn directly from Ibram X. Kendi’s book, Stamped.14 While there is nothing wrong with helping teachers share and obtain lesson plans for their classrooms, hijacking such a service to instead promote left-wing politics does nothing but raise tensions between public schools and the families they are meant to serve.

Lily Eskelsen Garcia

The politicization of teaching is not limited to Randi Weingarten and the AFT. Lily Eskelsen Garcia, then the president of the National Education Association, told Education Week in 2020 just before her term ended: “It’s the first time we’ve had three women [in the leadership team]. We’ve never had three women, we’ve never had three people of color. Now, we have two African Americans, and I’m Latina. I think it makes it so that even when we have members or affiliate leaders saying, ‘Our core business is really advocating for our members and negotiating contracts and your sick leave and your health care and protecting pensions,” you have Becky and Princess [Moss] and me saying, ‘Here’s why we care about DACA. Here’s why we care about the fact that we were able to talk about this,” in response to questions about incoming leadership at the NEA.15
Eskelsen Garcia’s observation shows there has been a push under recent leadership to move away from the traditional mission of a teachers union and to pick political fights that go beyond protecting and improving the working conditions and pay of teachers. Her comments also suggest that within the NEA, there is concern or outright opposition to this expansion of political activities from within the union. Union leadership disregards these voices, which come from dues-paying members. This politicization of their mission has led to conflict between NEA members and leadership. Prior to the 2016 presidential elections, Eskelsen Garcia was widely criticized for endorsing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s candidacy before Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) was able to establish himself in the primary race. Eskelsen Garcia cited the necessity of choosing a candidate early, so “education’s voice” has the opportunity to influence the campaign.16 This was a problem for the NEA under the Obama administration, which looked more favorably on policies to improve teacher evaluation, offer merit pay and school choice than the NEA supported.17 Eskelsen Garcia’s prioritization of political influence over the standard operations of her union led the organization to disenfranchise thousands of its own members in the endorsement process, and to endorse a candidate who ultimately lost to the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
Eskelsen Garcia is also on the record making derogatory statements about students who require extra support in the classroom. Referring to the duties of teachers to adapt to student needs, she described some students as “chronically tarded [sic] and medically annoying.” Although Eskelsen Garcia issued an apology for the statement and explained that she meant to say, “chronically tardy,” and that medically annoying was a failed attempt to humorously describe children who take their emotions out on teachers by behaving poorly, some were still upset with the sentiment expressed.18 As the Washington Post reported, some parents of children with special needs felt that the message of Eskelsen Garcia’s speech, even after she issued corrections, expressed a misplaced frustration with disabled and special needs children who are simply seeking an education and support from their community.19 Many educators go into the profession for the purpose of serving the young and the vulnerable, and would surely resent the implication that teachers resent working with special-needs children.
Lily Eskelsen Garcia expressed “grave concerns” with having armed police officers acting as “school resource officers” in schools, despite acknowledging that she knows many parents who believe their children are protected from in-school violence by these officers.20 While this may not be true for all parents, the influence of teachers unions creates means the messages they push carry more political weight than that of parents, since families have no union to represent them. Thus, when the social activism of the day demands removing resource officers from the classroom, closing down schools for COVID, or teaching controversial and subjective curriculum to young students, the needs of parents and students sink beneath the lobbying influence of an organization like the NEA. This expansion of political spending and influence cultivation also benefits those in the leadership positions of the movement. When her term as president of the NEA ended, Eskelsen-Garcia began a campaign to become Education Secretary under President Biden. Though this unofficial campaign failed, she was believed to be one of the top candidates for Secretary of Education and had extensive support in Congress and in the press.21 Likewise, Randi Weingarten’s family has benefitted from her role as a union leader. Weingarten’s wife, Sharon Kleinbaum, was repeatedly nominated to serve on the Commission of Religious Freedom, first by Senator Chuck Schumer in 2020, and then in 2021 by President Joe Biden.22 Rebecca Pringle, Lily Eskelsen Garcia’s successor as president of the NEA, has put her own stamp on the political activity of the nation’s largest teachers union. During the 2020 election, Pringle oversaw the union’s endorsement of Joe Biden and a massive mobilization campaign to put hundreds of thousands of union members to work canvassing and knocking doors for Biden’s campaign. Pringle’s endorsement of Biden came after teachers unions began to clash with the Trump administration over the reopening of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, Pringle worked to prevent the reopening of public schools in the United States. When it came to light that she had played a role in setting the federal guidelines for school reopening so that they were especially restrictive, she downplayed concerns about the influence of teachers unions on policymakers and the negative effects school closures have had on students, especially vulnerable students that the unions claim to prioritize in their work. Pringle shrugged it off with a single-sentence tweet: “It’s no secret we want to keep our students and schools safe.”23

Teachers union leadership has benefitted from the expansion of political spending and influence. It keeps their jobs and their names relevant and leads to personal enrichment and the advancement of their own agendas. Many of the current criticisms levied at teachers unions are embodied in the controversies which surround leaders like Weingarten and Eskelsen Garcia, both of whom are pushing for an evolution of the role their organizations play in classroom politics, despite objections from parents and teachers who face mounting pressure to pick a side.

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