The NEA Would Rather Organize Democrats than Classrooms

At their convention earlier this month, the National Education Association (NEA) — the nation’s largest teachers union — elected a team of social justice advocates, experienced agitators, and associates of the Democratic Socialists of America as their new leaders.

Along with the fresh faces, the union also passed a broad swath of amendments, resolutions, legislative initiatives, and new business items. The content varied from an amendment endorsing bell-to-bell bans on students using their cell phones in classrooms, to a directive mandating that the union develop resources to combat conversion therapy for LGBT teens, to a new program encouraging union-friendly educators to run for political office.

The NEA also hosted a series of workshops about “organizing for power,” which focused on combatting “disinformation,” promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and working with friendly legislators in the pursuit of social justice.

Taken together, the NEA’s latest flurry may seem like a grab-bag of progressive political initiatives packaged with education reform branding. To some extent, it is a grab-bag of progressive political initiatives packaged with education reform branding. But what it reveals is that the NEA has been a political machine for so long that they no longer seem to understand why they exist.

Instead of a labor union, the NEA is a quixotic homunculus of a body politic that is part super PAC and part utopian commune. They try to be everywhere and do everything, and only occasionally do they truly function as a labor union should, rendering most of their efforts useless. Our schools and our teachers deserve better.

The most obvious place to begin is the money. In 2025, the union spent $45 million on its core responsibility — representing teachers and their interests. However, this constituted only 10% of its total spending. Where did the rest of the money go? Politics. According to data gathered by the Illinois Policy Institute, the NEA spent $51.7 million on direct contributions and lobbying, as well as a whopping $123.3 million on politically-motivated contributions, gifts and grants. This does not include the funds used to pay its executive team lavish salaries.

But the NEA is not merely packaging funds and shipping them off to their preferred political candidates. Many unions do that. What distinguishes the NEA is how integral they are to a massive network of progressive organizations. Over the past 10 years, the NEA has issued hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to everything from left-wing think tanks like the Economic Policy Institute, to journalistic outlets like Politico, to a cornucopia of movement organizations and voter outreach groups.

Amidst all of this politicking, classroom teachers are nowhere to be found. While the NEA acts like a power player in left-wing politics, an NEA-funded poll found that 44% of educators consider student behavior and classroom discipline to be their most pressing day-to-day concerns. The union just endorsed cell phone bans, but they were late to the party rather than leading the conversation, and they’ve doubled down on the “restorative justice” practices that have made classroom management so challenging.

This is because what actually happens in schools is ultimately of secondary importance. The NEA increasingly behaves as though it exists to cultivate a particular moral and political vision of society — one built around so-called equity and liberation — rather than to represent educators. Public education is undoubtedly part and parcel of this broader operation, but it is a means to an end.

Teachers who oppose the union’s vision of an ideal world are given short shrift, but the NEA is still more than happy to collect their dues — all so that they may act as a slush fund for progressive causes and organizations.

The union’s general assembly has spent an extensive amount of time debating the most effective forms of resistance to President Donald Trump’s “fascist” policy agenda, particularly regarding immigration enforcement. The NEA’s executive director also declared that the union doesn’t “need to just be at the table. We need to own the table.” But what does “owning the table” do for the 35% of American teachers, many of them NEA members, who identify as Republicans?

The NEA’s champions will undoubtedly argue that education is inherently political. They’re right. Basic decisions concerning what children should learn and how they should learn it will always involve politics. Nevertheless, there is a profound difference between an organization engaging in the political process to advance the interests of teachers and students, and an omnicausal political movement that occasionally pays lip service to educational technology or the proper methods of teaching reading.

While organizations like the Teacher Freedom Alliance are trying to fill the void the NEA left, it’s hard to escape the union. The NEA is still top dog. It has been a boon for progressive activists, and has represented their political movement extraordinarily well. Teachers, not so much.