Teachers unions’ political obsession harms children

OPINION:

America’s schools are in a learning crisis, but you wouldn’t know it from the nation’s largest teachers union. At the National Education Association’s recent Representative Assembly, delegates focused on politics: fighting President Trump’s supposed “authoritarianism,” opposing immigration enforcement and calling the 2026 elections a “pivotal moment for our democracy.”

I saw this same misplaced focus take hold in Hartford, Connecticut, where I taught physical education for 35 years before retiring last year.

When I criticized a union-backed professional development program focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, I was disciplined and threatened with termination.

Across the country, school districts and teachers unions are likewise pushing politics and DEI over academics. Teachers who raise concerns are often targeted and punished.

This must change.

In 2020, I sat through required training titled “Identity and Privilege.” The goal seemed to be shaming straight, White, Christian males. When I was asked for my opinion, I spoke bluntly but honestly, saying, “I was just man-bashed and White-shamed.”

Months later, I was told that school officials were investigating me for creating “an unsafe and hostile environment.” Administrators — many with no teaching experience in Hartford, if any at all — were targeting and smearing me. After more than three decades with a spotless personnel file, I was reprimanded, required to attend “sensitivity training” and told I could lose my job.

I filed a grievance to defend myself, but by contract, only the union could take my grievance to arbitration. However, the Hartford Federation of Teachers, the local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, refused because I wasn’t a union member. Yet Connecticut law requires the union to represent all organized employees, not just union members.

Recently, outgoing AFT President Randi Weingarten wrote that teachers unions are committed to “protect[ing] people’s rights to both their own expression and safe classrooms.” That sounds nice on paper, but when I respectfully spoke my mind, the union turned its back on me.

I filed an unfair labor practice charge against the union with the help of a nonprofit law firm, The Fairness Center. I won a judgment calling the union’s actions “intentional discrimination.”

The job of a teacher is to educate, protect and advocate for the children, and the job of a teachers union is to protect and advocate for the teachers — all of them. Now I am suing the district to challenge the discipline I never should have received and defend my right to speak freely.

This isn’t just about me.

The DEI-style training I spoke against was part of a districtwide classroom agenda. “Equity,” a concept that essentially says it’s OK to discriminate against “privileged” groups, took center stage at the expense of student achievement. In the name of “equity-based grading,” the Hartford School District uses a “minimum 50” grading policy that largely bars teachers from giving students less than 50 out of 100, even when students do no work or don’t attend class.

What’s more, individual schools no longer make the final decision on whether to hold students back. That call now comes from central office administrators.

This can result in students who aren’t ready receiving enough credits to pass on to the next grade or even graduate.

Now, just 25% of Hartford middle school students are proficient in reading and only 15% are proficient in math. Hartford High School, meanwhile, recently graduated an honors student who couldn’t read or write, according to the student’s lawsuit.

That’s not “equity.” It’s a system that’s failing children.

The union didn’t create the “minimum 50” rule or the district’s broader equity agenda, but it let them stand unchallenged for years.

This is the danger when political agendas take over the classroom and teachers feel silenced. Broken systems stay broken, and children get left behind.

It’s not just Hartford, either. Students are struggling nationwide. Just 28% of eighth-graders are proficient in math and 30% are proficient in reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Meanwhile, the NEA’s handbook calls for racial quotas and demands that teachers acknowledge “White supremacy culture.” At its recent assembly, one union member’s reported response to a question about literacy seemed to sum up the union’s priorities: “We don’t have time for that. We’ve got to fight Trump.”

I spent 35 years trying to do right by my students. My job as a certified physical education teacher was to teach athletics, guide skills development and promote fitness, not to spread the divisiveness that DEI brings to the classroom. If I taught anything outside my certification, it was responsibility, accountability, work ethic and respect — things that should be taught in all classrooms.

That’s what teachers are supposed to do. School and teachers union officials would do well to remember that before more students slip through the cracks.

• John Grande is a retired public school teacher in Connecticut.