Your Teachers' Union Spent $669 Million on Politics, Not Classrooms

Every month, a little money comes out of a teacher's paycheck for union dues. She is told it covers the basics: bargaining, representation, somebody in her corner. Reasonable enough.

Then somebody sat down and added up the unions' own federal filings.

Since August 2015, the two big teachers' unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, have routed $669,324,912.33 of member dues and political-action money to outside political groups. Not to classrooms. Not to teacher pay. To politics. The watchdog Defending Education pulled the figures straight from the unions' LM-2 labor filings and their FEC reports, and totaled them up.

Six hundred sixty-nine million dollars. Hold that number for a second.

What does any of this have to do with your kid's classroom?#

Ask the simple question. What is a teachers' union for? Put it to the union and you will hear great public schools, fair pay, smaller classes, a voice for educators. Fine. So walk down the list of who actually got the money, and find the part about your child's classroom.

More than $85 million went to Democratic Party committees and their PACs. Another $32.6 million to the Senate Majority PAC, $25.8 million to the House Majority PAC, $44.7 million to a group called For Our Future, about $11 million to Priorities USA and its action fund. Checks went to EMILY's List, to Media Matters, to Color of Change. There is a line item, and I promise I am not inventing this, for $7,418 paid to the author Ibram X. Kendi.

Take the lanyard off this thing and it is not a parent-teacher group. It is a political machine, funded by a payroll deduction.

The part aimed straight at the parent#

Here is where it stops being abstract. A chunk of that money had one very specific job: making sure your family cannot leave.

When parents in Kentucky pushed for school choice, the NEA put $7,215,000 into a group called Protect Our Schools KY to stop them. In Nebraska, $4,298,076 to repeal a choice law. In Colorado, $4,137,500 to a campaign called Public Schools Strong. Maine, Georgia, on and on it goes. The union takes a teacher's dues and spends them to keep your child inside the one system the union happens to run.

Read that twice. The people who tell you it is all "for the kids" spent millions to make sure you could not move yours.

Nobody leaked this. They filed it.#

The funny part, if you have a dark enough sense of humor, is that none of it is secret. Unions are required to file these reports. The PAC money sits in the FEC database. Defending Education did not hack a server or flip a whistleblower. It read the paperwork the unions themselves turned in, and it did arithmetic.

So the next time someone calls this a conspiracy theory, remember what it actually is. A spreadsheet. Their spreadsheet.

This is not the teacher down the hall#

Let me be clear about who is and is not the story here. This is not the teacher grading papers at her kitchen table at nine at night. Most teachers never saw this menu, never voted on these checks, and would be furious to learn their dues bankrolled a ballot fight three states away. The money comes out automatically, and the machine that spends it answers to itself, not to them, and certainly not to you.

That is the whole trick. Power hides behind a payroll deduction and a warm slogan, and it is betting that nobody ever adds up the receipts.

So carry one question into the next school board meeting, the next time the district swears there is no money for a reading aide while the union insists it is all "for the kids." Ask them to account for the $669 million. Then ask them to explain the $7,215,000 they spent so your kid could not leave.