Sneaky new teachers’ union plan to indoctrinate our kids: classroom AI

It’s time to go to war to stop teachers’ unions from brainwashing our kids.

Here’s the latest red flag: The American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and other K-12 teachers’ unions are trying to take control of the artificial intelligence programs used in America’s classrooms — and twist them for political ends.

The unions are collaborating with giant AI providers like Microsoft and Anthropic, who are footing the bill for nationwide programs to train teachers on using AI in the classroom.

Sounds at first like a win-win: New resources for students, and a new generation of customers for the AI industry. 

But the dirty secret is that the unions want to alter the answers AI produces, to ensure that students see content that’s not factually accurate, but politically correct.

That’s what education watchdog group Defending Education found in its new report.

The AFT, for example, is targeting 10% of its teacher members with a $12.5 million training program, funded by Microsoft and other sponsors, that pushes them to embed DEI ideology in their schools’ AI programs.

Why? To overcome the “algorithmic biases” supposedly built into those programs by their designers, who are mostly white and Asian males.  

Similarly, the Defending Education exposé found that NEA mandates tell local school boards to integrate DEI into their AI programs.

The unions call these changes to classroom AI “guardrails.”

In truth, teachers’ unions want to block students from seeing actual, undoctored facts about anything. 

Their objective is to indoctrinate, not educate.

That misguided mission is largely to blame for the past decade of drastic learning loss in K-12 schools: Too much indoctrination, too little emphasis on the basics of math and reading. 

It’s a bad omen for our country.

Parents and the public need to respond to this threat immediately, demanding that AI providers not sell out to unions’ left-wing goals in exchange for access to our schools.

Corrupting educational AI fits into a dangerous pattern of union-sponsored indoctrination in K-12.

A few months ago, the NEA launched its May Day 2026 Toolkit for teachers, using the theme “Workers Over Billionaires” and calling for a day of “no work, no school, no shopping.” 

That’s a holiday commemorated in communist countries. It has no place in American classrooms.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are trying to halt federal funding for schools that promote gender indoctrination, left-wing brainwashing and DEI.

Trump issued an executive order to that effect, and the House has passed the “Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act,” with a matching bill now moving through the Senate.

But this is not a federal fight: It must be waged state by state, school district by school district.

It will be toughest in the 12 states where teachers’ unions hold the tightest grip on state government — Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hawaii, Oregon, Illinois, Rhode Island, Alaska, New York, Minnesota and Connecticut, according to a new Fordham Institute ranking. 

Democrats control the governor’s office and both legislative houses in nearly all these states.

And while unions’ right to organize is protected by the First Amendment, lawmakers in red or purple states can trim union power by passing state laws that limit what is bargained collectively.

For example, Wisconsin under former Gov. Scott Walker took teacher promotions, performance evaluations, automatic dues collection and curriculum decisions off the unions’ bargaining table.

That’s a blueprint for red and purple states, and candidates are taking note. 

In Ohio, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has used his hotly contested race for governor to float the idea of “eliminating” the collective bargaining powers of teachers’ unions as a means of halting wokeness in the classroom.

“When I’m talking about pro-teacher (it) may not be pro-teacher union,” he’s said.

Lawmakers should also ensure maximum competition with union-run schools by eliminating caps on charter schools, something union sycophant Gov. Kathy Hochul refuses to do in New York —  and that Bruce Blakeman, her Republican rival, pledges to accomplish.

But the most promising battle strategy in deep blue states is local.

It starts with dispelling the myth that school-board elections are nonpartisan contests over what’s best for our kids.

Truth is, they are power struggles dominated by the unions, which put up candidates without identifying them as union toadies.

Those candidates win 70% of the time in a typical state — 90% of the time in New York state.

School boards hold the most sway over school curricula.

So Republicans and other reformers should make a point of intruding on these normally quiet, usually off-year local elections, to expose the union shills for who they are and to back real change — as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has done, with considerable success.

Diminishing union power over our children’s education is no small feat — but if we care about the future of our nation and our own kids, we have no choice but to fight.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.