Fraught with anti-Israel rhetoric and progressive advocacy, this year’s National Education Association Representative Assembly was abruptly canceled as union leadership locked out striking NEA staff members, pouring $12 million in membership dues down the drain.
As the NEA continues to crumble in the headlong pursuit of its radical political agenda, America’s educators are feeling the sting of dwindling support for a public school system in obvious decline.
Until now.
The Freedom Foundation’s second annual Teacher Freedom Summit held July 8-10, in Denver, Colo., brought together hundreds of public school teachers from across the nation for a crash course in revitalizing American education by ensuring union accountability.
The event kicked off with a rousing keynote address from author and political commentator Dr. James Lindsay, who exposed deep-seated issues with American education and encouraged teachers to take action.
No matter how slight their contribution, Dr. Lindsay remarked, attendees of the Summit are like the “falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains.”
During a jam-packed day of workshops on Tuesday, attendees were greeted bright and early with a panel featuring Mark Janus, lead plaintiff in Janus v. AFSCME, the landmark 2018 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the First Amendment right of government employees to decline union membership and dues and still keep their job.
Public-sector labor policy experts, including Freedom Foundation Director of Research and Government Affairs Maxford Nelsen, along with Stanford University and Hoover Institute Fellow Michael Hartney, then gave teachers the hard facts about union spending and mistruths.
Freedom Foundation civil rights attorney Tim Snowball continued with a presentation offering legal resources for opting out of union membership, followed by a series of panels including topics such as union bullying, union messaging and how to be an advocate on campus.
A new addition to this year’s Summit, educators were offered several opportunities to attend breakout sessions hosted by ICONS Women’s Sports, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, the Foundation for Economic Education and Freedom in Education.
Tuesday evening concluded with a keynote address from Dr. Carol Swain, a high school dropout and teenage mother raised in poverty who became an award-winning political scientist, a professor of political science at Princeton University, and a professor of law at Vanderbilt University.
Dr. Swain’s remarks, which described how her perseverance through adversity shaped her objection to the tenets of critical race theory, earned a standing ovation from the ballroom.
The event continued Wednesday, with a panel of state education commissioners, including Teacher Freedom veteran Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters joined by Superintendent Cade Brumley of Louisiana.
After a closing panel inviting teachers to consider decertifying their unions and developing local, independent alternatives, attendees had the opportunity to meet with others from their home state, joined by outreach experts from the Freedom Foundation’s staff.
“Many teachers finish the school year and they’re on empty,” one teacher noted. “The Teacher Freedom Summit fills us up and prepares us for battle for the upcoming year. It gives us hope.”
In the words of another, “I learned that I want to be an agent of change, and this conference gave me great tools to start my journey.”
This fall, Teacher Freedom Summit attendees will return to classrooms across the nation equipped with the resources necessary to alter the course of union influence over public education, renewed in their dedication to revitalizing American education for the benefit of educators and students alike.
