Posts tagged school choice
Teachers union uses felons to attack school choice in Arizona
July 28, 2026 // The Goldwater Institute’s complaint meticulously challenges the validity of more than half of the union-backed initiative’s signatures. If their challenges succeed, the union could be left with fewer than 200,000 signatures — considerably below the ballot threshold. According to Goldwater, most of the Protect Education Campaign’s signatures are invalid because they suffer from a variety of legal defects. Many signatures were not from registered voters. Others are invalid because the signature gatherer failed to fill out the initiative paperwork properly, such as listing a false address, failing to provide an ID, or failing to notarize the document. Tens of thousands are duplicates.
Nurses and teachers unions bankroll leftist candidates and causes
July 21, 2026 // Additionally, the AFT donated $150,000 to Gov. Tina Kotek’s (D-OR) reelection campaign on the eve of the May primary. Kotek then decided in June to opt Oregon out of the Trump administration’s school choice program, which would subsidize scholarships for K-12 students to cover the cost of private school tuition and homeschooling expenses. AFT has been lobbying Democratic governors to reject the education tax credits offered by the program, calling it a “private school voucher scheme.” Meanwhile, the Oregon Education Association declined to endorse Kotek, despite doing so in the past, out of frustration with the state’s school funding levels.
Op-ed: Why teachers unions fear, and fib about, new federal program
July 7, 2026 // Perhaps the unions are right to be scared. Anything that introduces competition into the educational landscape threatens their monopoly. When you read between the lines of Weingartner and Pringle’s letter, you can almost hear the death rattle. But in the end, this isn’t about the unions. This is about kids who deserve a high-quality education regardless of their household income or zip code. And anybody who gets between them and their parents would be wise to choose their words more carefully.
Report: The diminishing power of teacher unions
May 29, 2026 // The result is A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026. Building on our original study, the authors set out to gauge teacher union strength in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.). Collectively, the 59 measures—which include 29 new measures that were not in the original report—seek to quantify union strength in five key areas: Resources and Membership; Involvement in Politics; Labor and Bargaining Policies; Policy Wins and Losses; and Perceived Influence, which draws from an original survey examining how stakeholders in each of the 50 states and D.C. perceive teacher union strength today. The states with the strongest teacher unions are Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Hawaii. The states with the weakest teacher unions are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Mississippi. (See our interactive table on the report website for the overall rankings alongside the rankings for each of the five areas.)
Watchdog report exposes teachers union ‘political machine’ funneling more than $1 billion to liberal causes
April 27, 2026 // According to research from Defending Education, national teachers unions alone have directed roughly $669 million toward left-wing political groups, advocacy organizations and campaigns since 2015. When state and local affiliates are included, that figure balloons to more than $1 billion in total political spending. The reports track spending from the two largest unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), as well as their state-level affiliates, using federal filings and campaign finance records.
Opinion: Teachers Unions Get Desperate
February 17, 2026 // Antichoice plaintiffs “usually file lawsuits right before families sign up for the program just to be particularly cruel. They know they’ll lose nearly every case, but delaying or enjoining the programs in any way is the last-ditch effort to slow maximum uptake for families,” says Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children. Many suits are striking out. Idaho’s high court just ruled 5-0 in favor of the state choice program. Top courts in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and West Virginia have upheld choice programs. The U.S. Supreme Court has continued to issue beneficial rulings. Yet the legal threat is real, and unions, often accompanied by local school districts, continue to throw millions at litigation and disruption, forcing states to spend huge amounts to defend against them. Then the unions and the districts claim schools are underfunded.
Op-ed: Teachers’ unions have hijacked classrooms across the US to indoctrinate students with far-left propaganda
February 11, 2026 // The teachers’ unions fired the starting gun by blasting out anti-ICE propaganda to teachers, urging them to rally against immigration enforcement and turn schools into battlegrounds for their partisan fights. The National Education Association is also pushing teachers to print out immigration-related political propaganda posters and put them in their classrooms.
Union Activists Launch Full Scale Attack on Students, Families in AZ
February 8, 2026 // But now, the same sorts of union activists who called for shuttering schools during the pandemic and who unleashed unprecedented learning loss upon our public school students are now trying to smother the state’s flourishing ESA program. Despite the effort to paint this campaign as “protecting education,” it is nothing more than direct attack on students and families.
Chicago Teachers Union undermines yet another charter school
October 10, 2025 // There are currently 559 students enrolled in ChiArts, according to the district’s enrollment report for fall 2025. Four-in-five students are Black or Hispanic. Last year, the Acero Schools charter network announced it was closing seven of its 15 schools. As with ChiArts, CTU made a show of claiming it supported the parents and students affected by the closing of the seven Acero schools after its actions to hurt the school staffing, flexibility and ability to plan. Ultimately, CPS board members – appointed by CTU crony Mayor Brandon Johnson – voted to transition five of the Acero schools into district-run schools by the 2026-2027 school year. The absorbed schools will no longer be charters.
Op-ed: How Teachers Can Dismantle the Teachers’ Unions
August 12, 2025 // Conservative and independent teachers, who make up the other 59 percent of the profession, are forced to fund their political opponents while union bosses like Weingarten, who pocketed over $600,000 in 2024, and Pringle, an at-large Democratic National Committee member raking in over half a million dollars annually, live lavishly. These union elites are an embarrassment to teachers who just want to teach reading, writing, and math.