Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe released the following statement regarding the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions losing more than 2 percent of their memberships amidst increasingly divisive political activism:

“For the last two years, our national teachers’ unions have proven they are political entities first and foremost, and educating our children is an afterthought to their radical agenda.”

“We are only just beginning to see the damaging effects the prolonged school lockdowns, continued mask mandates and social isolation the teachers’ unions inflicted on our children, but last week the NEA focused their national convention on proposals to change the word ‘mother’ and ‘father’ to ‘birthing parent’ and ‘non-birthing parent’, and to impose mandatory masking and COVID vaccines in schools.

“Now the American Federation of Teachers released a poll that nine out of 10 respondents say schools have become too politicized, and 40 percent say they may leave the job in the next two years. What did the AFT expect when it spent the last two years pushing Critical Race Theory, Defund the Police, and sexually explicit material all the while keeping our kids out of the classroom?

“Our kids are dangerously behind in reading and math and many may never recover their academic and earning potential, but NEA and AFT leadership are focused on divisive politics that have nothing to do with getting our kids back on track. It’s shameful.

“It’s no wonder the NEA and the AFT both lost more than two percent of their memberships in just the 2020-21 school year. Good teachers want to educate our children but the union leaders want to politicize and indoctrinate them.”