The nation’s largest teachers’ union has a new president. Her record shows what the organization plans to do with members’ dues.
Princess Moss is now the president of the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, with nearly 3 million members. That makes her one of the most powerful figures in American education. She is also perhaps the most politically divisive.
Moss taught elementary music for 21 years in Louisa County, Virginia. She then spent two decades climbing the union ladder: president of the Virginia Education Association, NEA Executive Committee member, secretary-treasurer, vice president, and now president. Teachers, who joined a union thinking it existed to bargain over pay, benefits, and working conditions, should look closely at the person now running it.
A six-figure union salary, paid with teachers’ dues
As NEA vice president, Moss collected $416,514 in total compensation in 2025, according to federal labor filings. That included a $321,489 gross salary plus allowances and other compensation. Those dollars come from dues that are paid, directly or indirectly, by taxpayers. The NEA’s own most recent educator-pay report put the average public school teacher salary at $74,495. Moss made more than five times that amount before she even became president. Outgoing president Becky Pringle’s 2025 total compensation was even higher at $514,755.
Hardworking teachers pay the bills, and union leaders cash the checks.
The agenda is not a secret
Moss has not been shy about her priorities. The NEA’s own biography describes her as “an outspoken, sought-after advocate on the topics of racial and social justice in education” and “a staunch, outspoken ally” of “LGBTQ+ communities” and students based on “gender identification.” In 2023, she sat down with Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson to read When Aidan Became a Brother — a picture book about a transgender child — as part of HRC’s Welcoming Schools National Day of Reading. That program is aimed at elementary classrooms.
She has also framed opposition to DEI programs as an effort to turn “diversity, equity, and inclusion into a slur.” And under her leadership alongside Pringle, the NEA has maintained resolutions treating “white supremacy culture” as a primary root cause of problems in schools.
A narrow win and a promise to go on offense
Moss won the presidency with just 50.3 percent of the vote, barely avoiding a runoff among nearly 6,000 delegates. Her campaign slogan was “organize, organize, organize.” She says the union has been “on defense for too long” and must now “go on the offense.” School choice is a primary target, which Moss calls an “intentional plan to destroy education.”
In other words: more organizing, more politics, and more institutional resistance to parents who want options outside the district monopoly the NEA exists to protect.
Teachers still have a choice
This is the agenda at the top of the NEA.
If this agenda does not match your values, you have the right to opt out. The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME affirmed that public employees cannot be forced to fund a union as a condition of keeping their jobs.
The Freedom Foundation helps public employees exercise that right. Teachers do not have to fund a political machine they did not vote for and do not agree with.
If you are a public-school employee and want to stop paying dues to the NEA or its state affiliate, learn how you can opt out today right here!
