Why Are Teachers Pushing Activism Instead of Academics? | Standing for Freedom Center

Students across Washington, D.C., staged a walkout over ICE and the National Guard last fall. CREDIT: Shutterstock

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When those entrusted to teach the next generation abandon their own classrooms and encourage children to protest for left-wing causes, the question is no longer whether this is happening but why anyone still pretends it’s about education.

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Across the country, teachers are facilitating student walkouts to protest federal immigration enforcement. In some classrooms, teachers help students make protest signs during class time. In San Diego, a first-grade teacher posted video of herself flipping the American flag upside down in her classroom and hanging an “Abolish ICE” sign on the wall. In California, teachers led second-graders down sidewalks carrying anti-ICE signs and chanting slogans.

Meanwhile, hundreds of school districts have seen students walk out of class — some with teacher support, others with administrative indifference. School grounds have been repurposed as political theaters. Children who cannot read at grade level are being trained to stage protests over policies they cannot explain.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have threatened to investigate school districts for “facilitating” these protests, warning that teachers who encourage walkouts could lose their teaching certificates and districts could face state takeover.

The threats reveal the obvious: Teachers and administrators are enabling this political mobilization.

The question demands a direct answer: Why do teachers promote student walkouts and protests over politics?

Because political mobilization serves their ideological goals, creates the illusion of grassroots legitimacy for positions that cannot withstand scrutiny when debated by adults, and distracts from their own catastrophic failure to educate. Children chanting slogans they cannot defend provide cover for teachers who cannot teach them to read.

This did not happen by accident. For decades, ideological actors moved deliberately through teacher-training programs, administrative offices, and curriculum committees. What once required college-level immersion is now introduced in elementary schools, normalized faster, and celebrated as moral courage before students are old enough to understand the consequences of what they’re repeating.

Children are no longer being taught how to reason. They are being trained what to feel. They are not equipped to weigh competing claims, understand trade-offs, or appreciate how fragile ordered societies actually are. Instead, they are shaped into a worldview that treats the nation as an oppressor, borders as immoral, law enforcement as inherently suspect, and authority as something to be resisted rather than respected.

That worldview did not arise naturally. Teachers installed it.

The deeper contradiction exposes the fraud. None of these students would apply their ideology to their own lives. Not one would leave their front door unlocked for all comers. They understand boundaries instinctively. Teachers taught them to reject boundaries ideologically. That contradiction does not come from reason. It comes from training.

Proverbs 22:6 teaches, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Although they may not be Bible scholars, teachers understand this principle intuitively. That is why they work so deliberately to control formation, knowing that what fills a child’s mind shapes how they see the world, what they value, and how they respond to authority.

Academic Failure by Design

While students are trained to chant slogans and stage walkouts, they are increasingly unable to read complex texts, reason through arguments, perform elementary math, or compete academically with their peers around the world. A generation is being mobilized politically while being hollowed out intellectually.

Oregon provides the clearest evidence of this deliberate failure. The state suspended graduation requirements that students demonstrate basic proficiency in reading, writing, and mathematics. Teachers and administrators claimed that expecting students to read, write, and perform basic math was causing “harm” to “historically marginalized communities.”

Dan Farley, assistant superintendent of research for Oregon’s Department of Education, stated that the old requirements produced outcomes that “could all be predicted by race, ethnicity, IEP status, multilingual learner status. We have to do what we can to disrupt those basically racist outcomes.”

The suspension was extended for five years. Test scores remain well below pre-pandemic levels, with just 44 percent of 11th graders proficient in English language arts, compared to 71 percent in 2018, and only 20 percent proficient in math, down from 34 percent in 2018.

In Chicago, hundreds of public school teachers recently abandoned their classrooms — on the taxpayer’s dime — to lobby state lawmakers for a contract that would secure nearly $50 billion in taxpayer funds. The demands included funding for abortion and surrogacy, “LGBTQ+” training, gender-neutral bathrooms, and salary increases to nearly $150,000 annually.

Meanwhile, three out of four Chicago public school students cannot read at grade level. Nearly 83 percent fail to meet math proficiency standards.Poll: Do you think young people are becoming more conservative?(Required)Poll: Do you think young people are becoming more conservative?(Required)Poll: Do you think young people are becoming more conservative?(Required)Do you think young people are becoming more conservative?(Required)YesNoEmail(Required)

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Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates sends her own son to private school. Nearly 40 percent of Chicago public school teachers do the same — four times the rate of average American families. They know what these schools produce. They simply choose not to fix it.

Politics Over Safety, Ideology Over Students

The hypocrisy extends even to student safety. When the Department of Transportation announced emergency rules cracking down on granting commercial driver’s licenses to unqualified or illegal immigrants — prompted by fatal accidents caused by illiterate CDL holders — the American Federation of Teachers immediately sued to block the regulation.

Their reasoning? Some teachers hold non-domiciled licenses and drive school buses.

Teachers’ unions went to court to fight highway safety rules designed to protect the very children they claim to serve. AFT President Randi Weingarten called the safety regulation “spiteful” and accused the administration of trying to “hurt hundreds of thousands of lawful immigrants.”

She did not mention families of those killed by drivers who could not read road signs. She did not acknowledge that, in a Florida crash, an illegal immigrant trucker answered just 2 of 12 questions correctly on an English proficiency test before causing a crash that killed three people. She didn’t extend condolences to the family of the California high school basketball coach who was killed after his car was rear-ended by an illegal truck driver who was high and traveling well beyond the speed limit.

Romans 13 establishes that legitimate government authority exists “for your good” and serves as “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” When teachers and their union presidents actively work to undermine laws designed to protect children, they are not just violating professional ethics. They are resisting God-ordained authority meant to preserve order and protect the innocent.

The Church Cannot Remain Silent

The battle is not primarily academic, it’s spiritual, as Ephesians 6:12 remind us:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

What we are witnessing is the deliberate dismantling of ordered society through the corruption of student formation. Children are taught to despise their inheritance. Patriotism is reframed as oppression. Gratitude gives way to grievance. Authority is delegitimized.

This is what happens when adults abdicate their responsibility to teach truth and cede formation to ideologues who promise compassion while delivering chaos. Parents outsourced discipleship. Teachers abandoned instruction. Unions and political activists filled the vacuum.

The result is a generation taught to hate the structures that protect them. And when young people are taught to despise what shields them from chaos, they will cheer its erosion — at least until the consequences arrive.

Every child trained to reject biblical authority, despise ordered society, and embrace chaos as justice is a soul being formed for rebellion against God Himself.

Teachers are not just failing to educate — they are actively working to ensure students cannot recognize truth when they encounter it.

The Church must reclaim the responsibility it surrendered. This means parents refusing to outsource discipleship to institutions that oppose Christ. It means Christians speaking truth in the public square without apology. It means local congregations equipping families to educate and form children in biblical truth rather than abandoning them to ideologues who promise enlightenment while producing illiteracy.

This is not the moment to retreat into private faithfulness while the culture collapses. It is the moment to advance — boldly, clearly, and with full confidence in the authority of Scripture and the ultimate victory of Christ over every competing ideology.

The question is no longer how this happened. The question is whether the Church has the courage to fight for the children being sacrificed on the altar of left-wing political activism and whether we will stand before God having done everything we could to rescue this generation from those who would destroy them.

The teachers have made their choice. What will the Church do?

Source: https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2026/02/12/why-are-teachers-pushing-activism-instead-of-academics/

Chicago Public Schools Blew $23.6 Million on Luxury Trips. The Full Story Is Far Worse. | The Gateway Pundit

Chicago Public Schools Blew $23.6 Million on Luxury Trips. The Full Story Is Far Worse.

WATCH: Chicago Public Schools Blew $23.6 Million on Luxury Trips

Public school districts exist for one purpose: educating children. They are entrusted with public dollars, charged with preparing the next generation for citizenship and the workforce, and expected to manage resources responsibly. 

But in many major districts, that mission has collapsed under political control, financial irresponsibility, and a refusal to prioritize students. Few places illustrate this breakdown more clearly than Chicago Public Schools.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, a recent report from the CPS Office of Inspector General detailed $23.6 million in improper or wasteful travel spending—dollars that should have gone directly toward recovering from historic learning losses. 

Instead, district employees used public funds for high-end hotel suites, airport limousines, first-class airfare, and “professional development” conferences that resembled vacations more than training. One staff member extended a four-day seminar into a weeklong stay at a Hawaiian resort costing nearly $5,000. 

Another principal booked a luxury suite on the Las Vegas Strip and quietly extended the trip to celebrate an anniversary. In one school alone, 24 employees billed taxpayers $50,000 to attend a single Las Vegas conference.

The abuses extended overseas. CPS employees charged more than $142,000 for travel to South Africa, Egypt, Finland, and Estonia—complete with hot-air balloon rides and game-park safaris. These trips took place while Chicago families were told that there wasn’t enough money to fully address learning gaps or chronic absenteeism.

Most troubling, the waste accelerated when federal pandemic relief funds flooded district budgets. 

Of the $23.6 million identified, $14.5 million was spent in just 2023 and 2024. 

The money had been intended to repair the academic devastation caused by the Chicago Teachers Union’s decision to keep classrooms closed for 78 weeks—one of the longest shutdowns in the nation. 

Instead of investing in tutoring, extended learning time, or literacy interventions, district officials treated the funds as a travel account.

The consequences are measurable. Only about 40% of CPS students can read at grade level, and just 25% meet math standards. In certain neighborhoods, proficiency rates sink into the single digits. 

Nearly half of the district’s students—and an outright majority of high schoolers—are chronically absent. A school system cannot prepare students for college or employment when tens of thousands no longer attend regularly.

The connection between chronic absenteeism and public safety is well-documented. 

Communities struggle when an entire generation is disconnected from education and opportunity. No city with academic outcomes this low can realistically expect improvements in long-term safety or economic mobility.

The issue is not confined to Chicago. Across the country, elected officials have redirected money toward political initiatives instead of classroom instruction. 

In New York, lawmakers used the 2025 “People’s Budget” to expand ideologically driven personnel programs rather than academic recovery. They proposed $8 million to increase teacher-diversity pipelines—even though New York City’s teaching workforce is already 42% black, far above the city’s black population share. 

They spent hundreds of thousands for cultural-inclusivity initiatives and educator conventions while 154,000 New York City students are homeless and nearly half of students statewide fail basic reading exams. 

New York spends more per pupil than any state—over $39,000—yet performance continues to decline.

If funding alone determined outcomes, New York would be the best school system in America. Instead, it reflects a national crisis of priorities.

That is why school choice has become so compelling to families. Charter schools provide 30-50% more instructional time than traditional public schools and consistently show stronger achievement gains. 

A study in North Carolina found that entering a charter high school reduced a student’s likelihood of committing a crime by roughly 30%. Milwaukee’s long-running voucher program produced similar declines in criminal behavior among participating students. 

When families have options, they choose learning environments where expectations are higher, engagement is stronger, and resources reach classrooms instead of bureaucracy.

Chicago’s financial abuse and New York’s budget decisions highlight a simple truth: families—not systems—should control educational decisions.

The post Chicago Public Schools Blew $23.6 Million on Luxury Trips. The Full Story Is Far Worse. appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Half Of American Schools Require ‘Equitable’ Grading And Most Teachers Are Opposed: Survey | ZeroHedge

Lackluster student performance has plagued the Schenectady, N.Y., city school district for years.

The school district, like many others, implemented a “grading for equity” policy in response to dismal test scores.

However, as Aaron Gifford reports below for The Epoch Times, a recent national survey indicates that most teachers feel grade equity actually hurts students long term, although more than half of the schools and districts across the nation engage in the practice.

Schenectady’s 2022-2023 academic report said 95 percent of its high school freshmen were behind in math by three or more grade levels.

A year later, the district reported that in the first quarter of the 2022-2023 school year, more than half of its middle school students (grades 6-8) were three or more grade levels behind in both reading and math, while the daily attendance rate for high schoolers had dipped below 79 percent.

In response to these disappointing results, district leaders implemented a “grading for equity” policy whereby students are not penalized for handing in assignments late, and are allowed to retake tests with continuous guidance from teachers until their scores reflect proficiency levels. Incomplete grades for the semester require authorization from school principals. The policy took effect last fall.

“It’s almost academic fraud,” Christopher Ognibene, Schenectady High School social studies teacher, told The Epoch Times. He recalled a student who was given B’s all year but failed the end-of-the-year New York State Regents assessment with a score of 43.

“Watered-down report cards and transcripts mean nothing if you are left unprepared academically for college. And there are due dates in the real world—it doesn’t matter where you go after high school,” he said.

Most teachers agree with Ognibene’s assessment of the widely used approach, according to the recent survey by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Rand Corporation education team members.

The Aug. 20 report, “Equitable Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers,” summarized responses from 967 teachers from K-12 districts across the country in late 2024.

“Turns out, teachers don’t like it when the powers that be take a sledgehammer to their few sources of leverage over student motivation and effort. Nor do they like giving students grades they don’t deserve,” the report says.

The report identifies five equitable grading practices—unlimited retakes, no late penalties, no zeroes, no homework, and no required participation.

More than half of those surveys identified at least one of those practices in their school, while a quarter noted that their district allows three of them, most commonly unlimited retakes, no late penalties, and no zeros.

Eighty-one percent of the teachers surveyed said they are particularly opposed to requirements for partial credit awarded on late assignments.

The survey included an open-ended response section, where teachers indicated that a guaranteed grade of 50 or higher is a common practice.

“We have gone to the ‘do nothing, get a 50’ grade policy,” one teacher wrote. The report did not identify respondents. “Students have figured out that, if they work hard for a quarter (usually the first), they can coast the rest of the year and get a D.”

This practice received negative national attention in Hartford, Connecticut, last year after an illiterate high school senior graduated and was accepted to college. The student, Aleysha Ortiz, later sued the district, noting that she completed assignments by using a talk-to-text function on her phone.

Carol Gale, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers, previously told The Epoch Times that in addition to the automatic 50 score entitlement, her district only requires a 60 score to pass a grade level, and some students pass with 40 or 50 absences in a year.

“It seems to me this is allowed simply to embellish graduation rates,” she said.

The Fordham Foundation report doesn’t list the districts represented in the survey, but it does note that policies were hotly contested before their adoption in Schenectady, in Portland, Oregon, and San Leandro, California. It also said education leaders in Atlanta and Las Vegas are “reversing course” on grading for equity due to negative results.

Schools implement grade equity practices to counter low state test scores, bolster graduation rates, and address academic achievement gaps based on race and socioeconomic status.

Respondents said their school adopted policies from a 2023 book, “Grading for Equity: What it is, Why it Matters, and How it Can transform Schools and Classrooms.”  The author, Joe Feldman, a former teacher and principal, consults with schools across the country to implement those policies.

“Anything that has to do with equity and diversity for city schools, people eat it up,” Ognibene told The Epoch Times. “Everybody wants a silver bullet, but no book is going to fix what’s happening.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the Schenectady City School District for comment.

Gherian Foster, an activist with the Albany-based Black Abolitionist Directive who previously worked for the Schenectady City School District, said she believes grading for equity is a viable solution to improve student performance over time.

She said it encourages engaging classroom activities and discussions over what she called outdated and ineffective methods of instruction: drilling students to regurgitate information for the sake of high test scores.

“If [students] are just looking at their Chromebooks for every lesson, that’s not engaging instruction,” Foster told The Epoch Times. “That just stresses the teachers and the students out. Do we have to test them so much, or are there other ways?”

Source: Half Of American Schools Require ‘Equitable’ Grading And Most Teachers Are Opposed: Survey

How Many of Today’s Public School Teachers Could Pass This 8th Grade Exam from 1899? | The Gateway Pundit

How Many of Today’s Public School Teachers Could Pass This 8th Grade Exam from 1899?

An image is going viral on the social media platform X, showing a test for 8th graders from 1899. It demonstrates how dumbed-down our education system has become — with many believing that most high school students, and even public school teachers, probably would not pass it.

An image of the test was posted to X Tuesday with the caption that this was for 8th graders in rural California.

A quick glance shows subjects like Math, English, Music, Geography, and U.S. History.

Another 8th grade graduation exam—this one from rural California in 1899. These were not elite prep school kids, but farm children. pic.twitter.com/j1HgnVB1aa

— Jeremy Wayne Tate (@JeremyTate41) August 19, 2025

One English question asked students to write a biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with a minimum of six quotations.

Math questions had students working with fractions, decimals, and ratios, as well as a number of word problems, while the music section tested students’ knowledge of scales and time.

One geography question asked students to compare the climates of different American cities. It also tested their knowledge of South America and Europe.

Although cut off the page, the U.S. History section appeared to ask about the division between the North and South, with one abolishing slavery and the other utilizing it. Another question asked about the functions of the executive branch of government.

The New Republic posted another 8th grade exam from 1895 with similarly challenging questions.

Heads Up posted images of a test from 1912 for 8th graders, with questions like defining nouns, personal pronouns, longitude and latitude and asking students to “Describe the heart” and locate specific organs and describe their functions in the section of physiology.

Compare this to more recent images from commentator LibsofTikTok, showing how dramatic the shift has been in educational standards.

A 10th grade English class in October 2023 was probably too busy telling white students how awful they are to teach them any of the things 8th graders used to learn.

.@PburgSchools is reportedly teaching white students that they’re privileged because they’re white and that power structures which white people dictate, marginalize people of color.

.@PburgSchools is teaching kids that they’re guilty simply for being white pic.twitter.com/nEj9ZEeZmu

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 30, 2023

Another post indicated middle schoolers were being taught about radical gender ideology, which, again, was probably too time consuming to teach them anything useful that children from over 100 hundred years ago were learning.

Sent to me by a follower. A middle school in Alberta. They’re teaching kids about sexuality and genders using animals.

Homeschool your kids pic.twitter.com/SZOEdVqWzh

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 20, 2023

Another school brought in a drag queen to educate children about changing their name and gender in a legal sense.

SCOOP: Logan Memorial School (@LMECSD) in the @sdschools district brought an LGBTQ activist and dr@g queen to talk to students about how to file with the State to change their name and gender marker on legal forms.

They’re transing your kids in schools. pic.twitter.com/2cn2UnpQPI

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 23, 2024

Never mind today’s students. Could even 20 percent of today’s teachers pass any of the tests shown here? It’s doubtful if they’re spending classroom time exposing children to backwards race and gender ideology.

Education used to be a means of equipping youth with the tools to be successful.

Now it is about indoctrinating them to become activists for social causes.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post How Many of Today’s Public School Teachers Could Pass This 8th Grade Exam from 1899? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.