A new report has found that the largest teachers’ union spent roughly 10 cents on the dollar for activities directly representing its members over the last year, while much larger portions went to politics.
Produced by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) alongside researchers at Rutgers University and the Gevura Fund, the report found that out of the National Education Association’s (NEA) $450 million annual disbursement budget for fiscal year 2025, approximately $175 million was spent on political activities, lobbying, and contributions to outside organizations, which is nearly four times the $45 million spent on direct member representation. The NEA also has formal political entities, like its super PAC and a traditional PAC, that overwhelmingly direct a majority of their political spending toward Democratic candidates and Democratic-aligned political organizations.
As I have previously documented, it is hard to see this political spending as incidental. Instead, it appears built into the union’s structure. An organization federally chartered to “promote the cause of education in the United States” and to “elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching” has strayed far from that mission. Its representational function has become secondary to its political one. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent each year on political activities and lobbying, and yet teachers’ real wages have barely moved. The NCRI report comes with all the receipts on both the NEA and its sister union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), documenting how they share the same financial priorities:
The NEA and AFT have come to operate as institutions whose financial activity is increasingly difficult to reconcile with their stated representational purpose. They collect dues from millions of educators, route substantial portions of those dues through networks their own executives have led or continue to lead, misclassify expenditures across federal filings, and have produced little measurable improvement in the compensation, working conditions, or professional standing of the educators on whose behalf those dues are collected.
That last point, about misclassifying expenditures across federal filings, especially stood out to me. The report describes a pattern in which spending that should be categorized as political is instead filed under other purposes. This obscures the true scale of union political activity from members and the public.
At least now, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision, non-member teachers and other public employees in more than 20 states (Minnesota included) are no longer required to pay for the union’s politics through agency fees. The Janus ruling found it a First Amendment violation to require public-sector employees to fund collective bargaining and other union activities when they disagreed with the union’s position.
That was a significant victory. But it didn’t change what the unions do with the money they still collect.
While nonmembers aren’t financially supporting the politics, in states like Minnesota the union remains the exclusive representative and still comes with the job. Talk to younger teachers in Minnesota and ask if they got to vote on which union they want to represent them, or whether they even want union representation. For a system that emphasizes workplace democracy, that disconnect matters.
There are many reforms and mechanisms that would not only bolster oversight of unions but rein in their increasing focus on political advocacy and ideological activism. It will, however, take efforts by many stakeholders. Policymakers, school boards, union and non-union members, and the public all have a role to play.
Here are a few practical places to start, in no particular order:
- Rein in the National Education Association by passing the Stopping Teachers Unions from Damaging Education Needs Today (STUDENT) Act. This legislation reforms the NEA’s federal charter to bring it in line with other federally chartered organizations, and prohibits the NEA from engaging in electoral politics and lobbying, shutting down schools by going on strike, and ends direct and indirect taxpayer support and subsidies for the NEA and its affiliates, among other things.
- Give teachers represented by the NEA a voice and choice by requiring annual or biennial recertification elections. Minnesota teachers have not had a meaningful opportunity to vote for or against the union that represents them in decades.
- Promote the new federal tool that makes union spending more transparent and accessible to members, employees, and the public. Members may not know where exactly their hard-earned money is going, and they deserve a chance to analyze this data and then decide if union membership is still right for them.
- Remove arbitrary “opt-out windows” so union members can more easily exercise their rights. The process to calculate the annual dues authorization revocation window is not easy, as it is not simply the date that the dues authorization form was signed. If the narrow window is missed, public employees are locked into paying dues for another year.
- Make union PAC contributions opt-in, rather than opt-out. Education Minnesota automatically charges member teachers for a contribution to its Political Action Committee (PAC). Members have to request a refund of these dollars every year by a certain date and in a certain way. A truly member-driven union would adopt an opt-in system, where members have a choice to contribute in the first place versus the union taking the money and forcing teachers to go through a burdensome process to ask for it back.
- Inform educators of their rights regarding union membership. Financially supporting the union is no longer required for public employees to keep their jobs. Liability insurance is available through nonpartisan education associations for a fraction of the cost of dues.
