Hold onto your chalk, folks—the nation’s largest teachers’ union is stepping into a political minefield with a training program that paints one major party as the boogeyman of bias in education.
According to the New York Post, the National Education Association (NEA), representing millions of educators, is under fire for hosting a training event from Dec. 2-4, 2025, titled “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy,” which targets union staff with materials accusing Republicans of pushing divisive and prejudiced narratives in schools.
This isn’t just a workshop on classroom inclusivity; it’s a pointed jab at conservative policies, according to documents unearthed by the conservative group Defending Education.
The training, part of the NEA UniServ and Organizing Training Program 2025–2026, aims to confront what it calls “strategic racism and transphobia” while tackling systems of privilege impacting LGBTQ+ educators and students.
Sessions promise to hone skills for addressing implicit bias and micro-aggressions, but the materials take a sharp turn by framing Republican rhetoric over the past decade as a tool to stoke fear and secure power.
Specifically, the NEA’s documents claim conservatives have wielded anti-transgender policies alongside attacks on Critical Race Theory to rally their supporters—a charge that’s raising eyebrows among critics who see this as partisan overreach.
“Over the last ten years, Republicans in state legislatures have increasingly turned to anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation as a powerful complement to their arsenal of racist dog whistles used to whip up fear and consolidate power,” the NEA training packet states.
That’s a bold accusation, but let’s unpack it—labeling an entire political group as fearmongers risks alienating a huge swath of parents and educators who might simply disagree on policy, not harbor hate.
“They have paired these attacks with fear-mongering about Critical Race Theory, mobilizing their base with a potent mix of racist and transphobic tropes,” the packet continues, doubling down on the narrative that dissent equals bigotry.
While the training pushes a “Race Class Gender Narrative” to counter these perceived attacks, it also offers practical steps like encouraging “pluralized” gender language and providing guides for educators transitioning within school environments.
Think pronoun pins on ID badges and sample emails for announcing transitions—these are tangible tools, but they come wrapped in a package that seems to equate conservative viewpoints with oppression. Is this advocacy or indoctrination? The line blurs when a union representing public educators picks a side so explicitly in the culture wars.
Defending Education, the group that exposed these materials, isn’t mincing words about the NEA’s direction, arguing it’s veered far from its mission to advance education.
Financially, the NEA and its counterpart, the American Federation of Teachers, have funneled over $43 million into left-leaning advocacy between 2022 and 2024, per a report from Defending Education based on labor disclosures—though union dues themselves aren’t used for direct campaign contributions.
Meanwhile, the NEA’s decision earlier in 2025 to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League, amid rising anti-Semitic incidents, only adds fuel to concerns that the union is prioritizing ideological battles over broader educational goals. The ADL called the move “profoundly disturbing,” and it’s hard to argue this doesn’t send a mixed message about combating hate in all its forms.