Politically Unstable: America needs to overhaul its education system

Video

Saturday, November 1, 2025

OPINION:

From prioritizing liberal media sources in assignments about misinformation to a renewed push for remote learning from Chicago Public Schools, schools around the nation are failings students.

Nicki Neily, founder and president of Defending Eduction, joins Kelly Sadler on Politically Unstable.

[SADLER] There were a few stories that broke this week regarding our education system. The first one was out of Pennsylvania. They’re touting a new literacy program for their students, telling students and teachers how to spot misinformation, disinformation. That’s kind of a key word for the left. They love that. And funneling them into what they say are unbiased news sources so that they can get a better education and understand what the true news is. Worldwide, those outlets are the Guardian, Al Jazeera, the BBC and Reuters, which all have a left-leaning bias. And then when it comes to national news, it’s AP. It’s PBS and NPR, which Republicans just worked really hard to defund, to decouple taxpayer money to, their propagandists on the Hill. And then for their left-leaning choice, it’s Vox. And for the right-leaning choice, it’s The Dispatch. The Dispatch is famously anti-Trump. It’s from a bunch of disaffected Republicans that are writing for that paper, never-Trumpers. So you wouldn’t really classify it as a conservative news source. But what do you make of these efforts? Is Pennsylvania the only state in the nation that’s trying to push this? Or does it have the potential to spread nationwide?

[NEILY] No, you’re totally right. This is frightening. And it is everywhere. And it’s funny because even thinking back to the Biden years, this is something that was being pushed by their team. As you said, disinformation being a very hot topic on the left. And it had the sign-off and the endorsement of people like Randi Weingarten. And frankly, anytime the teachers’ unions say this is a great program, I think, handle with care.

Because, as you said, it’s teaching children which sources to go to, filtering out what is or is not true. And we saw that play out, obviously, extremely successfully during COVID when they were able to control and throttle what people had information to. And so treating children with kid gloves, I think, is an insult. We want children to be able to read and discern and develop their own opinions. But also, I mean, so many of those outlets have fallen asleep at the switch during COVID, during the Biden administration. Even thinking about the Associated Press, the Associated Press now has partnerships with a lot of left-leaning foundations that then channel information through outlets like ProPublica, that then get sort of whitewashed and are republished at outlets like the AP. But again, coming from a very clearly ideological standpoint, this is making our children worse off. It’s not making our children better consumers of news. It’s making them a little bit stupider.

[SADLER] Well, I just don’t understand. I’m all for promoting literacy. I’m all for getting younger children to read newspapers like the Washington Times and long-form articles because I feel a lot of kids these days are getting their information off of a 20-second TikTok video, which might not necessarily be accurate in the information either. But why not just promote a wide spectrum of news? Give them the New York Times. Give them the Washington Times. Give them the Washington Post. Give them the New York Post. And then, an exercise on, okay, these stories were all covered by these four outlets. Do you notice the difference in them, the perspective in them, and analyze so that they can make up their own judgment or understand where the spin is coming from? This just seems to be putting their spin down their throats and then labeling it as the truth. These are unbiased networks when really they’re not.

[NEILY] Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head. We want our children to learn how to think critically. I’m probably stricter than many parents, but I certainly do not want my child consuming Al Jazeera. That is Qatari-funded Hamas propaganda. So there are some outlets that I don’t even want them to look at. Or if they do, I want them to realize, as you said, what is the lens that this is coming from? What is the agenda of the people who are putting this information out?

[SADLER] Is this a nationwide effort being pushed by the unions? It happened in Pennsylvania and was picked up in Pennsylvania this week, but should people in other states be concerned? They call it the Information and Media Literacy Toolkit, which is given to teachers to then disseminate to their students. Is this a nationwide effort?

[NEILY] It is, absolutely. On its face, it sounds really great. Of course we want media literacy. So we’re seeing states like California, Wisconsin, where these ideas are being floated at the state level, at the local level. But let’s also remember at the end of the day, where our children are in terms of academic achievement. Our children cannot read. They cannot perform basic math or science functions. And so to add on additional mandates, additional course requirements that are watering down everything else, what is being thrown out when they are just getting this kind of propaganda? I think it really is concerning because we’re also putting — it’s not technically an unfunded mandate — but it is putting another level of responsibility on teachers, tying their hands, saying you must use this. And so I just, I think it’s a really questionable thing, both pedagogically as well as content-wise.