Revoke the Teacher Union’s Charter

Do American schoolchildren a big favor: Revoke the teachers union’s charter.

The first thing you notice about Title 36 charters, the kind the National Education Association holds, is that Congress restricts this special status to particular patriotic organizations.

The NEA patriotic? From the leaders’ speeches and the organization’s actions, you just might wonder.

If ever a federal charter deserved revocation, it’s the NEA because of those speeches and actions, which together give off a fairly clear ideology akin to the far left of today’s Democrats. That rhetoric is hardly the stuff of federal charters.

The NEA, founded in 1857, merged in 1870 with other groups and forever jettisoned its core mission, which was elevating the teaching profession and promoting the cause of education in these United States. New cause: Politics.

Today it’s an unapologetic arm of the Democrat Party. Its membership, which is falling precipitously, is giving more money than ever before to Democrat causes.

How? Even though there are fewer teachers in the fold (it’s down to 2.8 million after dropping by nearly 18,000 in 2024), the NEA raised the dues it charges members, and it’s accepting lots of new members who are outside of the teaching profession.

Only about 9 percent of the NEA’s income went to “elevate the teaching profession.”

The rest goes to politics. Not quite 99 percent of that money goes to Democrats; the remainder – and you wonder why they even bother – to Republicans.

The expenditure to better the lot of teachers is presumably the sum total of what the union is doing to help educate your children. Let’s see how that’s working out.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress annually tests students in the 4th, 8th and 11th grades and checks the results against a dumbed-down “grade level” of performance. Educators had to “dumb down” the grade level years ago because so many kids were flunking.

The results for students are shockingly bad, even by the lower standard. In the most recent NAEP evaluation, only about a quarter of students could read at grade level; even fewer could reach that level in math, geography, or U.S. history.

But good heavens, NEA money and influence sure have helped elect a slew of Democrats to legislatures and school boards so they can keep the educational losing streak going.

The streak has been profitable for some. The Democrats hold a majority on most school boards and are running amok in left-wing state legislatures. They are steering curriculum into plainly partisan territory.

Top Democrat issues like changing kids’ genders, anti-Semitism, promoting illegal immigration, green scaremongering, lurid sex for small children, race and class warfare, distorted and racist history – the union throws lots of money and plenty of influence into these.

So not surprisingly, a few voices are beginning to surface calling for the union’s charter to be revoked. Such a move would send an important message.

The classification gives the NEA’s campus in Washington, D.C., full tax exemption. That should be revoked. And the NEA has managed, unlike other Title 36 recipients, to avoid having to file an annual report to Congress or having restrictions on political activities. That, too, should end.

As well, more than 400 people working in that building are paid hefty six-figure salaries. What would those salaries be if the NEA had to start paying its own way without taxpayer subsidy?

The union president, Becky Pringle (annual salary: $481,161), sounds very much like any politician in saying revocation is just an attempt to silence the union for its advocacy and views. She said most people back the issues pushed by NEA.

Polling doesn’t support her assertions. Neither did the 2024 election. People want to reduce, not increase, partisan influence in education. They want more accountability, a return to educational priorities and at least a symbolic prioritizing of students.

None of this is guaranteed to happen if the union’s Title 36 charter is revoked. But if it isn’t, it’s “keep shoveling money” into a corrupt establishment. You’ve already seen what that’s doing to the public schools – and, saddest of all, a whole generation of our people.