Teachers unions shut down American classrooms for two years while children fell years behind in reading and math.
Now a Senate report shows what the union was building while the doors stayed locked.
What investigators found in the curriculum is the reason a 120-year charter is suddenly on the table.
NEA Classroom Indoctrination Included Lessons Praising Convicted Cop Killers
The Senate HELP Committee report, released this week, documents the National Education Association's deep financial and operational partnership with two radical nonprofits – the Zinn Education Project and Rethinking Schools.
The Zinn Education Project assigns students the role-play identity of Assata Shakur, convicted in 1977 for the first-degree murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster.
That is not a fringe lesson distributed in a few blue cities.
A 2024 American Historical Association survey of more than 3,000 middle and high school history teachers across nine states found that more than one in four now uses Zinn Education Project materials in class.
The same curriculum justifies the actions of the Black Panther Party – a Marxist organization responsible for the murders of police officers and members of its own ranks.
"The Marxist and communist ideologies espoused by the Black Panther Party are inconsistent and incompatible with the foundation of the United States Constitution," the HELP Committee report states.
The NEA did not partner with these groups quietly.
It gave them prime conference space at national conventions, built curriculum alongside their organizers, embedded their lesson plans in official teacher handbooks, and held up their materials in official communications as accurate history.
NEA Dues Funded Democrat Dark Money While Leadership Collected Cushy Jobs
The financial picture is just as damning.
Since 2015, the NEA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in member dues to left-wing advocacy organizations and Democrat political action committees.
The recipients include the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the Tides Foundation – two of the largest Democrat-aligned dark money operations in the country.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund alone spent $196 million in 2022 electing Democrats and protecting abortion rights.
The NEA also directed millions to its own PAC, which almost exclusively supports Democrat candidates.
In some cases, the political organizations receiving NEA money later handed union leadership cushy jobs – the kind of arrangement that would trigger federal ethics investigations if it happened inside a government agency.
"The central issue is not whether every such expenditure is impermissible," the HELP Committee report states. "Rather, it is whether members receive sufficient transparency about how their dues are used."
The answer, based on the report, is no.
Jewish Teachers Were Harassed at the NEA's Own Annual Assembly
There is more.
The NEA – the same union that brands itself a defender of "equity" and "inclusion" – failed its Jewish members.
An August 2025 letter from the NEA's Jewish Affairs Caucus documented members reporting "shunning, harassment and antisemitic comments" at the union's annual assembly.
The NEA voted at its 2025 Representative Assembly to prohibit use of all Anti-Defamation League materials and programs – stripping teachers of one of the primary tools for combating antisemitism in schools – over what critics described as ideological grievance.
The union also rewrote its official language around immigration enforcement, substituting the word "kidnapping" for standard terminology describing ICE deportation operations.
NEA Federal Charter at Risk After Senate HELP Committee Report
The NEA is the only labor union in America with a congressional charter.
Congress granted that charter in 1906 to "elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching; and to promote the cause of education in the United States."
It is not unprecedented for Congress to act.
In 1918, following Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Congress repealed the 1907 charter of the National German-American Alliance after finding it had drifted catastrophically from its stated mission – and the mechanism has existed ever since.
Senator Bill Cassidy is now pointing his colleagues directly at it.
Revoking the charter would not dissolve the NEA, which is separately incorporated in the District of Columbia.
What it would do is strip the union of its 120-year congressional seal of approval and signal that the United States government no longer endorses what is happening inside those classrooms.
No parent voted for their child to role-play as a convicted cop killer.
Teachers didn’t sign up to have dues laundered through Democrat dark money operations.
And no one authorized a union that lets its own Jewish members get harassed at the annual assembly while voting to cut off the one organization built to stop it.
Cassidy is right.
The charter was for teachers.
The NEA stopped being for teachers a long time ago.
Sources:
- Robert Schmad, "Nation's Largest Teachers Union Under Fire as Controversial Agenda Puts Century-Old Federal Charter at Risk," Fox News, September 2, 2026.
- "How a Dead Marxist Became the Most Powerful Force in American Education," Restore Childhood, May 20, 2026.
- "GOP Renews Push to Revoke Federal Charter for Nation's Largest Teachers' Union," Education Week, July 18, 2025.
- "Congress Considers Stripping Top Teachers Union of Federal Charter," Governing, July 21, 2025.
- "Rethinking the National Education Association's Federal Charter," Freedom Foundation, July 18, 2023.
- H.R.4595, National Education Association Charter Repeal Act, 118th Congress, Congress.gov.