The National Education Association — the nation’s largest teachers’ union — never misses an opportunity to misrepresent its true objectives.
With dictatorial precision, the organization’s leaders consistently mouth the mission statement from the NEA’s website claiming to “advocate for education professionals” while “improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn.”
But the numbers tell a different story.
In fact, the NEA last year devoted only 8.5 percent of its revenues to anything remotely connected with teachers and students, with the rest used to line the pockets of union leaders and advance a radical leftist agenda at odds with the views of many of its members and most of the nation’s parents.
According to the most recent LM-2 form submitted by the NEA to the Internal Revenue Service, the union raked in a staggering $377 million in dues and agency fees during 2021 alone.
Of that total, however, only $32 million was earmarked for representational activity — presumably the NEA’s top priority.
So where did the rest of all the teacher’s dues money go?
By the union’s own accounting, it spent $66 million on political activities.
Let that sink in for a minute. The NEA diverted twice as much of its members’ dues money to greedy politicians as it did actually representing them.
And it didn’t ask which candidates and causes to support, either. Historically, the union supports radical liberals about 99 percent of the time, no matter what its members might actually prefer.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The LM-2 also lists another $117 million spent for “contributions, gifts and grants,” that were primarily political.
Even more despicably, the NEA dispersed more than $55 million in benefits to union officers. Almost twice as much as it spent advocating for the teachers from whose paychecks the dues were confiscated.
As if more were needed, this is incontrovertible proof the Freedom Foundation’s work is so crucial.
Our outreach efforts inform teachers and all public employees across the country that they no longer have to pay union dues. They can put their hard-earned money back into their pocket and stop funding union bosses — to say nothing of the socialist agenda their rhetoric denies but their actions enthusiastically advance.
To date, the Freedom Foundation has cost government unions over $195 million, and we will continue our mission until every public employee is informed of their right to opt out of union dues.
