Teachers have a lot to learn from Trump’s education secretary
Education Secretary Linda McMahon just dropped a bombshell video that's got teachers' unions scrambling. In it, she lays out the facts plain and simple: "Teachers, did you know you are not obligated to pay union dues no matter what state you live in? In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that public employees, including teachers, cannot be required to join or pay a union as a condition of employment."
She's talking about the landmark Janus v. AFSCME decision, where the Supreme Court affirmed that public employees can't be compelled to subsidize union speech they disagree with. McMahon drives the point home: "If you choose to stay, that’s your call. The point is: the choice is yours."
If public school teachers are tired of their hard-earned money funding radical agendas, it's time for them to opt out and take back control of their paychecks.
Teachers unions like the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) aren't prioritizing educators or their students. They're bloated bureaucracies more interested in politics than pedagogy. Take the NEA – less than 10% of its more than $400 million annual budget actually goes toward representing teachers in the workplace.
The rest is funneled into lobbying, executive perks and ideological crusades that have nothing to do with improving classrooms. In the last election cycle, 99.9% of the AFT's political contributions – under the leadership of President Randi Weingarten – went straight to Democrats. That reeks of money laundering for Democrats, siphoned right out of teachers' paychecks.
These unions are partisan, and they're also pushing extreme propaganda into schools. Teachers' unions have been blasting out anti-ICE materials, urging educators to rally against immigration enforcement and turn classrooms into partisan battlegrounds. The NEA and its affiliates are encouraging teachers to post immigration-related political posters and attend anti-ICE trainings, all while schools should be focused on reading, writing and arithmetic – not indoctrinating kids with far-left activism.
Look at the NEA's annual convention in Portland, Ore. Their resolutions read more like a declaration of war on the Trump administration than an education policy meeting. They labeled Trump a "fascist," railed against his education policies and vowed to fight every step toward accountability and choice.
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Meanwhile, NEA President Becky Pringle, who is an at-large member of the Democratic National Committee, and AFT's Weingarten, who announced a partnership between her union and the World Economic Forum to create curriculum, are raking in about half a million dollars each year, extracted from the dues of hardworking teachers who make a fraction of that. That's a racket.
Most teachers don't even align with this radicalism. According to an Education Week survey, a majority identify as either Republican or independent, outnumbering Democrats. Teachers should not keep funding their political opponents. It's time for them to stop bankrolling the very people working against their values and start keeping more of their salaries for themselves and their families.
The good news is that teachers don't have to go it alone when they leave the union. Alternatives like the Teacher Freedom Alliance (TFA) offer free membership and personal liability insurance for educators who opt out. TFA's coverage is superior – $2 million per occurrence, twice the union's typical $1 million limit, and it's in the teacher's name, not the union's. That means teachers are protected individually, without the union deciding whether to defend them based on its agenda.
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Unions claim to protect teachers, but they really shield the worst performers while penalizing the best. Uniform salary schedules and blocks on merit pay mean great teachers are dragged down by dead weight. Without the union's monopoly, top educators could negotiate their own salaries based on performance, free from low performers holding everyone back. The system rewards seniority over excellence, and it's time to stop shortchanging great educators.
Choice is key. But more and more teachers are choosing freedom. Just this month, Washington state teachers went viral for speaking out against their union's overreach. Fifth-grade teacher Travis Reep accused the Washington Education Association of bullying and silencing educators who support parental rights, saying union leaders are driven by "activists" with an agenda. He added, "I’m not the only teacher that knows that parents love their kids far more than I ever could."
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Matt Bell, who left after 29 years, revealed how teachers are banned from informing parents about their child's gender transition or pronoun changes: "I'm forced to keep secrets from the parents." Bell explained his decision to leave: "When I saw my union trying to go against protecting female athletes and go against parental rights, I said, 'I'm done.'" These brave voices show the tide is turning.
And that’s not all. In Florida, two union bosses – Teresa Brady and Ruby George – were just sentenced to prison for stealing millions from hardworking educators. Brady got 27 months, George 12 months, after embezzling more than $2.4 million through fraudulent leave schemes.
In Chicago, the Liberty Justice Center locked arms with union members to sue the Chicago Teachers Union for failing to produce required financial audits for five years in a row. Congress is now investigating, and it turns out the CTU failed at least two of those audits, with serious flaws in their financial statements.
When teachers exit en masse, it forces union bosses to refocus on education instead of activism. Teachers have the power to starve the beast by keeping their hard-earned paychecks when unions overstep. Opting out means saving money and reclaiming the profession from political hacks.