On this episode of The Truth with Lisa Boothe, Lisa sits down with Defending Education founder Nicki Neily to expose how teachers unions have spent more than $1 billion on political activism while America’s education system continues to decline. Nicki breaks down the rise of woke ideology in schools, the battle over school choice, gender policies in classrooms, and why parents began fighting back after COVID lockdowns. They also discuss declining test scores, union influence, Title IX battles, and the growing movement to restore accountability in education.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Truth with Lis Taboos, where we get
to some heart of the issues that matter to you. Today,
we've got Nicky Neely on the show. She's the founder
and president of Defending Education. We're going to talk about
a new report looking at how some of these teachers' unions,
LIKENEA and AFT, how they funneled over a billion dollars
into political causes in the last decade alone. So what
(00:28):
are they funding? Why are they funding it? Do we
even think these teachers know what the money is being
spent on?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
And we spent all this money on kids' education, almost
a trillion dollars per year, yet you've got something like
seventy percent of kids can't read or do math at
grade level, So what's up with that.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We'll talk to Niki about that.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And then meanwhile, you look at union bosses like Brandy Wadgarten.
She's making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So we're going to.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Dig in to how these unions have become partisan mis
genes at the expense of kids.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So stay tuned for Nicky Neely.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Well, Nicky Neely, it's great to have you on the show.
Got a let's talk about so appreciate you making the time.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So you are the founder and president of Defending Education.
You guys have a report where you look at you know,
the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, these teachers' unions,
and they've directed over one billion dollars toward political causes
in the last day a decade. You know, walk us
through that, Walk us through some of the political causes
(01:37):
or political you know, some of the causes that they
put this money towards.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Yeah, absolutely, and yeah it was a billion between the
national organizations and then a handful of state ones as well.
But I mean huge amounts of money. Thirty two million
dollars to Senate Majority pack, that's Chuck Schumer's path that
just endorse Graham planners, so good people getting good senators elected,
twenty five million dollars to House major pack, also left
of center, I mean tens of millions of dollars to
(02:04):
oppose school choice efforts in states like.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Kentucky, Nebraska, and Maine.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
But then even looking through to one hundred and six
million dollars through the California Teachers Association packs. And so
they're definitely leaning hard into the politics as well as
into funding a lot of hard left progressive activist organizations
like Planned Parenthood.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
When you look at these teachers' unions, you know, started
to obviously represent the interests of teachers.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
But so how long has it been this political?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
You know, has it gone a lot worse under the
Trump administration first and second terms, or.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Kind of walk us through that the genesis of it.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Yeah, I mean my gut, without having gone back much farther,
is that this has been going on for a really
long time. I mean, certainly Randy Weiningert is a political beast.
Becky Pringdle is a political beast as well. But yeah,
I think a lot of this that, you know, the
Trump administration, the first Trump term was a kick in
the pants to a lot of these progressive groups. That
was when we saw organizations like the ACLU that used
(02:59):
to add actually believe in things like a color blind constitution,
leaning hard into immigration and opposing the Trump administration instead
of defending all speech, all elements of the Bill of Rights,
et cetera. So I think that that's probably where things
took a sharp spike up. But that being said, I
mean there also were things like, in the wake of
the Janice decision, the Supreme Court decision that said that
(03:20):
unions couldn't automatically deduct us from teacher salaries, we saw
a conscious decision by unions too.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Okay, well, we'll just run candidates.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
We'll just fund candidates who will do our bidding, who
will rubber stamp the collective bargaining agreements or the kinds
of state laws that we want. And so I think
this was a sort of a perfect storm.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
But you look at you know, Brandy Warren Garden, for instance,
and you know, I think she's making something like close
to six hundred thousand dollars per year.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Walks.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I mean like clearly, clearly like she's taken care of
you know, you know, walk us through some of these
leaders of these organizations like her.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, I mean, you.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Know, Becky Pringle is the head of the National Education
Associated which actually is bigger by numbers than AFT, and
she escaped scrutiny. You know, Brandy is much more outfront,
is on TV all the time, has this book out
calling us all, you know, horrible, horrible people. But yeah,
I mean I think a lot of these union leaders
are not only are there the salaries they're drawing. But
then there also are the kind of perks that they've
(04:23):
negotiated for themselves and their leaders at the state level,
at the local level, things like release time where they
get to go and do union work while still drawing
a public sector salary.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And so that's how I mean, I'm.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
From Chicago originally, that's how we have teachers that are
doing things like get out the vote for now Mayor
Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago teachers union activist.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
So it's like it is sort of a a cumulatus
thing as well as I mean, looking at some of
these conferences they go to.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
A few months ago, the NEA just had a lovely
event in Hawaii, where I'm sure many of us would
love to go to. But if you can have your
office pay for an all expenses trip to why of
course you're going to go on stuff like that. And
so I think there are also the perks that are
built into that as well as you know, the access
to pologists.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Et cetera, which is frustrating.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well, and then two, some of them send their own
kids to private schools, and we see this with a
lot of the politicians too, who scrutinize, you know, school choice.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
They fight it, but then you know.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Their kids go to private schools and they don't award
that same opportunity to kids in need.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
They're so opposed to to school choice.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
I supposed to school choice because they have a captive audience.
Public schools get per pupil funding, which means the more
students that are enrolled, the more butts and seats, the
greater the money they have. And so they would rather
trap children in failing schools where they have clearly betrayed
the trust, not taught children what kids need to know,
but they have you know, for those kids when they're
(05:53):
trapped there.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Then have a captive audience. You know. I think about
families like mine. I have an eleven year old and
a twelve year old.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
They're in a school, but I have the means to
be able to pay for that out of pocket.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So what is sad to.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Me is that the children most in need of you know, interventions,
support tutoring. They are trapping some of these schools that
are unsafe, that don't have proper facilities that you know.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
The books, the curriculum, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Is highly ideologically motivated and then those also often are
our children whose parents cannot be paying as close attention
as maybe you and I would be to the kinds
of material that are coming home, emailing the teachers staying
in chuch say, I'm a little concerned about this X,
Y Z lesson plan. And so those are the kids
that are being victimized by these unions more than anything.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Either.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Then you look at something like seventy percent of kids
cannot read or do math at grade level benchmarks, despite
the fact that we spend you know, trillion dollars per
year and in education, so I mean how much. I
mean a lot of that you know has gone a
lot worse since COVID. But talk about some of these
outputs that we're seeing both you know, nationwide but also
(06:59):
you know, Chicago, for instance, is you know, one of
the worst offenders there in terms of kids not being
at grade level and you know pretty much anything.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Right, I mean, you know this clearly came on the
public radar as a result of COVID. Parents had a
window into what their kids were learning and or we're
not learning and we're frustrated and disappointed and so but
even before the pandemic, you know, America's achievement scores on
the NATE scores, the nation's report card, those were nothing
to write home about, and so children had not been
(07:30):
thriving before the pandemic. As a mother, you know, my
kids are in school for seven or eight hours a day.
When they're in school, I expect them to be learning
core curriculum, reading, writing, math, science, Spanish, things like that.
I do not want my kids to be spending five
hours of their eight hour school day on things like
(07:50):
identity politics. Unfortunately, that was one of the things that
COVID showed us, is that there was a huge emphasis
on grievancees, oppressor oppressed matrixes, even know, having things like
gender putting put into classes like map class where you
think it doesn't belong, but that's incorporated into word problems.
I mean, it's really it was really astonishing to see
just how far the education.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
System has fallen, and I think many parents had no.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Idea that it had gotten this bad, because you know,
teachers don't like teacher unions don't like accountability, and so
they have lobbied for years to decrease the amount of
testing that was taking place. Because a test score can
show when kids are not doing as well. In some states,
we actually saw what used to count for proficient at
a state level actually was lower than what the federal
government was counting as proficient. And so parents were being
(08:37):
gas liped and being told that their kids were doing
all right, when in reality their children were not doing
very well. And I think that was also a really
sobering wake up call.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Got to take a quick commercial break more with Nicky
on the other side, you mentioned that parents, you know,
like you people woke up during COVID and saw some
of the things their kids were being taught in schools.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
How did it get so bad?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
You know, you know, how how did the curriculum get
so bad with sort of injecting, you know, a lot of.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
This left wing political stuff into it.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah. I think this was a multi year journey.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
I mean, this is kind of the intent of taking
over the schools. Unfortunately, when you look at organizations like
the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had a curriculum they
have been putting.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Into schools for years.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
It used to be called teaching tolerance now it's called
learning for Justice and very noble. Years ago, I think
during kind of the George Floyd era, they were talking
about how they had.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Hundreds of thousands of educators within their network.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
You don't build up those numbers just in the wake
of George Floyd turning on a dime.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
You build those.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Relationships over years, over decades, and there are a variety
of other organizations that's in education project et cetera, that
have all been working hand in glove with each other.
That was something that really surprised me when I launched
this organization is I kind of grew up under the
rubric of school choice, good, teachers unions bad. But I
didn't realize that the education industrial complex is so big
(10:03):
and so captured. I mean, I think back to a
couple of years ago when the National school Boards Association,
the Federal Trade or you know, the trade association that's
supposed to help school board members be more efficient. They
were the ones that authored that letter to the Biden
administration calling parents domestic terrorists, asking the Biden administration to
invoke the.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Patriot Act against us.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
You know, entities like the English Teachers Association, the Math
Teachers Association, They've all gone woke, and that to me
was just I mean, the most kind of sickening thing
is all of our money all of our teachers, all
these people in all these schools are all working together
against us, and we didn't even know that we were
involved in this fight.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
When when did you?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Why did you start?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
When you started? You're the founder and president of Defending Education?
What was it? Walk us through sort of your origin
story and and why you started it.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
I used to run a campus free speech organization called
Speech First, and when the pandemic hit, I was unable
to sue universities because there were no humans on college campuses.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
But I had a little kid. They were at home.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
I didn't actually have any problems, they were just in
kindergarten and preschool. But I remember hearing from all of
my friends, who were all Chicago Democrats, you know, asking
how do I reopen my elementary school?
Speaker 3 (11:10):
What do I tell my principle?
Speaker 4 (11:11):
And I remember thinking to myself, bless your heart, you
think they care? And that was just an interesting data
point for me. Fast forward a few months George Floyd happened.
Schools around the country start sending out these old district
notes saying we're so systemically racist, we commit to being
anti racist. I get another flurry of messages that said,
did my school just call me a name. And I
(11:31):
thought when I was growing up, schools didn't use to
reach out to us about everything. The Challenger explosion. The
goal for I schooled you to not be involved in
political issues or news.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Of the day. So that was interesting to me. The
thing that.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Flipped the switch was actually a superintendent in Chicago, near
where I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, said he was
going to reopen schools for in person education for black
and brown children before white children because of anti racism.
I remember screaming in my computers saying, you can't do that.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
That's unconstitutional.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
And that's when I realized cat to twelve was the
next battlefront, and that was the fight that I wanted
to get involved in. So I can thank that superintendent
for his unconstitutional acts for getting me red pilled exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You know, and we on we saw during COVID I,
when we gave K through twelve schools something like one
hundred and ninety two billion for reopening and learning loss
and a lot of school district remain closed for two years.
You know, that was enough money to give every teacher
in America sixty thousand dollars bonus. Where does some of
this money go because I mean, we spent a lot
of money on education.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So where's the money going.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, that was.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Such a I mean, it was criminal how some of
that money was spent, surprise, surprise. There was not a
ton of oversight that was put in place, and the
Blue states like California and Illinois pissed it away on
things like DEI initiatives on anti racism, programming, on social
emotional learning, not on I mean, I remember when that
bill was going through Congress. I assumed it would be
used for air purifiers, Clorox lives, things to actually get
(12:58):
our schools reopen so our children could learn again.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
And it turns out that that wasn't the case at all.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
But yeah, I mean, you look at the amount of
money right now that certain school districts are spending New
York City forty thousand dollars a child, I mean Chicago,
I think it's in like the mid thirties, Los Angeles.
The same thing. Our kids are not learning. There's a
huge growth in middle management. There's a huge growth in
basically everything except you know, money going to classrooms. I
(13:23):
still see solicitations online all the time from teachers, you know,
through gofund me and stuff like that, Oh, we need
crayons for our classroom, and I think you have so
much money. There are affirmative choices being made by our
school districts to bring in Ebrom Kennedy as a speaker,
buy all the teachers a copy of his book, et cetera,
not to buy new textbooks, not to get new computers
(13:45):
for the learning lab. So the fact that we have
elected officials and administrators making those decisions and.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Then realizing you know what, actually.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
You know, you and I have to live on a budget,
but they can always go take on another nine figure
bond initiative. There has to be accountability brought back to
this system because we are failing our children and our
country is going to suffer as a result.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Do you think these union members even know what this
money is being spent on and where their dues are going.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I don't think so at all. I mean, you know,
teachers are like us.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Certainly there are a few bad apples that are activists,
but they're not all bad. But I very highly doubt
that there are teachers across America one hundred percent of
ANYA or AFT members that are okay with their money
going to groups like the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project
is the one that has been pushing the rental exclusion
policies that say parents don't have a right to know
their child's gender at school.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
There have been a number of lawsuits.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Brought by teachers against school districts saying I don't want
to keep secrets.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I am not comfortable with this.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Southern Property Law Center is another one that got money
from the union's media matters, the Clintons, both through the
Clinton Global Initiative and the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation
as well as the Hillary Victory Fund.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
I mean, she lost that election. Why were they spending
a million and.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
A half dollars, you know, propping up this Clinton edifice
NAACP color Change organization that called us all racist because
we wanted a colorblind education system.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
And so I just I don't think that many.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Teachers realize that that's where their money is going to.
I think they assume it's going to go towards you know, better, better,
more time off, better professional development opportunities, not towards this
hyper political nonsense.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And I know that you guys have also been a
part of, you know, fighting some of this, uh, you know,
with University Washington of you know, allowing facilities and in restrooms,
allowing men in women's restrooms and in private spaces, or
even at I think there was all an all women's
(15:39):
Smith or what is it all that all women's Smith
college admitting men.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Women's college. So to talk to just a little bit
about the work.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You guys are doing and trying to, you know, protect
women's spaces from men.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah, this has been a tremendously fun fight because it
is something where you look at where the American public
is eighty percent of people across the board, it's kind
of the low end believe that women, you know, sex
segregated spaces, bathrooms, locker rooms, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Sports should be separate, separate.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
And so we have filed civil rights complaining, We were
involved in a number of lawsuits including we still have
an open one against the Biden administration funny enough for
their unconstitutional Title nine rewrite, but filing civil rights complaints
and EEOC complaints to try and protect those students, to
protect those teachers that are being forced into things, being
forced to use students or their peers preferred pronouns when
(16:34):
they don't want to. That's compelled speech. I don't care
if you worship the spaghetti monster. You cannot be forced
to say somebody else's pronouns if you do not believe
in it, full stop.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And so that is the hill I will die on.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
But it's been fun to pursue these things, both in
the court of public opinion as well as in the
court of law, because you know, the constitutions on our side.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
It's also been pretty wild to see groups like ACLU,
which has like defended women's protections and you know Title
nine for forever now supporting men and women's sports. You no, Like,
it's kinda it's like, I don't know, we're living an
upside down world where all these previous defenders of women's
(17:15):
rights are now actively working against women. But I guess
that's the bizarro world we live in these days.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Yeah, no, it's it's really disappointing, but it's fun to
you know, call them that on things like that, just
like with the Southern poverty loss under stuff last week.
I mean, we were named a hate group in twenty
twenty three, which has been was a horrifying thing to
go through. But it turns out, okay, well, who was
actually the racist who was the one literally giving money
to the KKK. It wasn't me, it was you guys,
And so yeah, I think you know, the truth comes
(17:46):
out of the end, and there's egg on all these
liberal group spaces.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Absolutely, Nick Neelly, appreciate you, founder and president of Defending Education.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Appreciate your time. Thank you that was Nick k Neelly.
Appreciate her for coming on the show.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday,
but you can listen throughout the week.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Awesome one to thank.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
John Cass and my producer for putting the show together.
Until next time.
Welcome to the Truth with Lis Taboos, where we get
to some heart of the issues that matter to you. Today,
we've got Nicky Neely on the show. She's the founder
and president of Defending Education. We're going to talk about
a new report looking at how some of these teachers' unions,
LIKENEA and AFT, how they funneled over a billion dollars
into political causes in the last decade alone. So what
(00:28):
are they funding? Why are they funding it? Do we
even think these teachers know what the money is being
spent on?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
And we spent all this money on kids' education, almost
a trillion dollars per year, yet you've got something like
seventy percent of kids can't read or do math at
grade level, So what's up with that.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We'll talk to Niki about that.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And then meanwhile, you look at union bosses like Brandy Wadgarten.
She's making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
So we're going to.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Dig in to how these unions have become partisan mis
genes at the expense of kids.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So stay tuned for Nicky Neely.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Well, Nicky Neely, it's great to have you on the show.
Got a let's talk about so appreciate you making the time.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So you are the founder and president of Defending Education.
You guys have a report where you look at you know,
the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, these teachers' unions,
and they've directed over one billion dollars toward political causes
in the last day a decade. You know, walk us
through that, Walk us through some of the political causes
(01:37):
or political you know, some of the causes that they
put this money towards.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Yeah, absolutely, and yeah it was a billion between the
national organizations and then a handful of state ones as well.
But I mean huge amounts of money. Thirty two million
dollars to Senate Majority pack, that's Chuck Schumer's path that
just endorse Graham planners, so good people getting good senators elected,
twenty five million dollars to House major pack, also left
of center, I mean tens of millions of dollars to
(02:04):
oppose school choice efforts in states like.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Kentucky, Nebraska, and Maine.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
But then even looking through to one hundred and six
million dollars through the California Teachers Association packs. And so
they're definitely leaning hard into the politics as well as
into funding a lot of hard left progressive activist organizations
like Planned Parenthood.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
When you look at these teachers' unions, you know, started
to obviously represent the interests of teachers.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
But so how long has it been this political?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
You know, has it gone a lot worse under the
Trump administration first and second terms, or.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Kind of walk us through that the genesis of it.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Yeah, I mean my gut, without having gone back much farther,
is that this has been going on for a really
long time. I mean, certainly Randy Weiningert is a political beast.
Becky Pringdle is a political beast as well. But yeah,
I think a lot of this that, you know, the
Trump administration, the first Trump term was a kick in
the pants to a lot of these progressive groups. That
was when we saw organizations like the ACLU that used
(02:59):
to add actually believe in things like a color blind constitution,
leaning hard into immigration and opposing the Trump administration instead
of defending all speech, all elements of the Bill of Rights,
et cetera. So I think that that's probably where things
took a sharp spike up. But that being said, I
mean there also were things like, in the wake of
the Janice decision, the Supreme Court decision that said that
(03:20):
unions couldn't automatically deduct us from teacher salaries, we saw
a conscious decision by unions too.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Okay, well, we'll just run candidates.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
We'll just fund candidates who will do our bidding, who
will rubber stamp the collective bargaining agreements or the kinds
of state laws that we want. And so I think
this was a sort of a perfect storm.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
But you look at you know, Brandy Warren Garden, for instance,
and you know, I think she's making something like close
to six hundred thousand dollars per year.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Walks.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I mean like clearly, clearly like she's taken care of
you know, you know, walk us through some of these
leaders of these organizations like her.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, I mean, you.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Know, Becky Pringle is the head of the National Education
Associated which actually is bigger by numbers than AFT, and
she escaped scrutiny. You know, Brandy is much more outfront,
is on TV all the time, has this book out
calling us all, you know, horrible, horrible people. But yeah,
I mean I think a lot of these union leaders
are not only are there the salaries they're drawing. But
then there also are the kind of perks that they've
(04:23):
negotiated for themselves and their leaders at the state level,
at the local level, things like release time where they
get to go and do union work while still drawing
a public sector salary.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And so that's how I mean, I'm.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
From Chicago originally, that's how we have teachers that are
doing things like get out the vote for now Mayor
Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago teachers union activist.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
So it's like it is sort of a a cumulatus
thing as well as I mean, looking at some of
these conferences they go to.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
A few months ago, the NEA just had a lovely
event in Hawaii, where I'm sure many of us would
love to go to. But if you can have your
office pay for an all expenses trip to why of
course you're going to go on stuff like that. And
so I think there are also the perks that are
built into that as well as you know, the access
to pologists.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Et cetera, which is frustrating.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well, and then two, some of them send their own
kids to private schools, and we see this with a
lot of the politicians too, who scrutinize, you know, school choice.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
They fight it, but then you know.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Their kids go to private schools and they don't award
that same opportunity to kids in need.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
They're so opposed to to school choice.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
I supposed to school choice because they have a captive audience.
Public schools get per pupil funding, which means the more
students that are enrolled, the more butts and seats, the
greater the money they have. And so they would rather
trap children in failing schools where they have clearly betrayed
the trust, not taught children what kids need to know,
but they have you know, for those kids when they're
(05:53):
trapped there.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Then have a captive audience. You know. I think about
families like mine. I have an eleven year old and
a twelve year old.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
They're in a school, but I have the means to
be able to pay for that out of pocket.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So what is sad to.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Me is that the children most in need of you know, interventions,
support tutoring. They are trapping some of these schools that
are unsafe, that don't have proper facilities that you know.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
The books, the curriculum, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Is highly ideologically motivated and then those also often are
our children whose parents cannot be paying as close attention
as maybe you and I would be to the kinds
of material that are coming home, emailing the teachers staying
in chuch say, I'm a little concerned about this X,
Y Z lesson plan. And so those are the kids
that are being victimized by these unions more than anything.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Either.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Then you look at something like seventy percent of kids
cannot read or do math at grade level benchmarks, despite
the fact that we spend you know, trillion dollars per
year and in education, so I mean how much. I
mean a lot of that you know has gone a
lot worse since COVID. But talk about some of these
outputs that we're seeing both you know, nationwide but also
(06:59):
you know, Chicago, for instance, is you know, one of
the worst offenders there in terms of kids not being
at grade level and you know pretty much anything.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Right, I mean, you know this clearly came on the
public radar as a result of COVID. Parents had a
window into what their kids were learning and or we're
not learning and we're frustrated and disappointed and so but
even before the pandemic, you know, America's achievement scores on
the NATE scores, the nation's report card, those were nothing
to write home about, and so children had not been
(07:30):
thriving before the pandemic. As a mother, you know, my
kids are in school for seven or eight hours a day.
When they're in school, I expect them to be learning
core curriculum, reading, writing, math, science, Spanish, things like that.
I do not want my kids to be spending five
hours of their eight hour school day on things like
(07:50):
identity politics. Unfortunately, that was one of the things that
COVID showed us, is that there was a huge emphasis
on grievancees, oppressor oppressed matrixes, even know, having things like
gender putting put into classes like map class where you
think it doesn't belong, but that's incorporated into word problems.
I mean, it's really it was really astonishing to see
just how far the education.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
System has fallen, and I think many parents had no.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Idea that it had gotten this bad, because you know,
teachers don't like teacher unions don't like accountability, and so
they have lobbied for years to decrease the amount of
testing that was taking place. Because a test score can
show when kids are not doing as well. In some states,
we actually saw what used to count for proficient at
a state level actually was lower than what the federal
government was counting as proficient. And so parents were being
(08:37):
gas liped and being told that their kids were doing
all right, when in reality their children were not doing
very well. And I think that was also a really
sobering wake up call.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Got to take a quick commercial break more with Nicky
on the other side, you mentioned that parents, you know,
like you people woke up during COVID and saw some
of the things their kids were being taught in schools.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
How did it get so bad?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
You know, you know, how how did the curriculum get
so bad with sort of injecting, you know, a lot of.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
This left wing political stuff into it.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah. I think this was a multi year journey.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
I mean, this is kind of the intent of taking
over the schools. Unfortunately, when you look at organizations like
the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had a curriculum they
have been putting.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Into schools for years.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
It used to be called teaching tolerance now it's called
learning for Justice and very noble. Years ago, I think
during kind of the George Floyd era, they were talking
about how they had.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Hundreds of thousands of educators within their network.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
You don't build up those numbers just in the wake
of George Floyd turning on a dime.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
You build those.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Relationships over years, over decades, and there are a variety
of other organizations that's in education project et cetera, that
have all been working hand in glove with each other.
That was something that really surprised me when I launched
this organization is I kind of grew up under the
rubric of school choice, good, teachers unions bad. But I
didn't realize that the education industrial complex is so big
(10:03):
and so captured. I mean, I think back to a
couple of years ago when the National school Boards Association,
the Federal Trade or you know, the trade association that's
supposed to help school board members be more efficient. They
were the ones that authored that letter to the Biden
administration calling parents domestic terrorists, asking the Biden administration to
invoke the.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Patriot Act against us.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
You know, entities like the English Teachers Association, the Math
Teachers Association, They've all gone woke, and that to me
was just I mean, the most kind of sickening thing
is all of our money all of our teachers, all
these people in all these schools are all working together
against us, and we didn't even know that we were
involved in this fight.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
When when did you?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Why did you start?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
When you started? You're the founder and president of Defending Education?
What was it? Walk us through sort of your origin
story and and why you started it.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
I used to run a campus free speech organization called
Speech First, and when the pandemic hit, I was unable
to sue universities because there were no humans on college campuses.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
But I had a little kid. They were at home.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
I didn't actually have any problems, they were just in
kindergarten and preschool. But I remember hearing from all of
my friends, who were all Chicago Democrats, you know, asking
how do I reopen my elementary school?
Speaker 3 (11:10):
What do I tell my principle?
Speaker 4 (11:11):
And I remember thinking to myself, bless your heart, you
think they care? And that was just an interesting data
point for me. Fast forward a few months George Floyd happened.
Schools around the country start sending out these old district
notes saying we're so systemically racist, we commit to being
anti racist. I get another flurry of messages that said,
did my school just call me a name. And I
(11:31):
thought when I was growing up, schools didn't use to
reach out to us about everything. The Challenger explosion. The
goal for I schooled you to not be involved in
political issues or news.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Of the day. So that was interesting to me. The
thing that.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Flipped the switch was actually a superintendent in Chicago, near
where I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, said he was
going to reopen schools for in person education for black
and brown children before white children because of anti racism.
I remember screaming in my computers saying, you can't do that.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
That's unconstitutional.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
And that's when I realized cat to twelve was the
next battlefront, and that was the fight that I wanted
to get involved in. So I can thank that superintendent
for his unconstitutional acts for getting me red pilled exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You know, and we on we saw during COVID I,
when we gave K through twelve schools something like one
hundred and ninety two billion for reopening and learning loss
and a lot of school district remain closed for two years.
You know, that was enough money to give every teacher
in America sixty thousand dollars bonus. Where does some of
this money go because I mean, we spent a lot
of money on education.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So where's the money going.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, that was.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Such a I mean, it was criminal how some of
that money was spent, surprise, surprise. There was not a
ton of oversight that was put in place, and the
Blue states like California and Illinois pissed it away on
things like DEI initiatives on anti racism, programming, on social
emotional learning, not on I mean, I remember when that
bill was going through Congress. I assumed it would be
used for air purifiers, Clorox lives, things to actually get
(12:58):
our schools reopen so our children could learn again.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
And it turns out that that wasn't the case at all.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
But yeah, I mean, you look at the amount of
money right now that certain school districts are spending New
York City forty thousand dollars a child, I mean Chicago,
I think it's in like the mid thirties, Los Angeles.
The same thing. Our kids are not learning. There's a
huge growth in middle management. There's a huge growth in
basically everything except you know, money going to classrooms. I
(13:23):
still see solicitations online all the time from teachers, you know,
through gofund me and stuff like that, Oh, we need
crayons for our classroom, and I think you have so
much money. There are affirmative choices being made by our
school districts to bring in Ebrom Kennedy as a speaker,
buy all the teachers a copy of his book, et cetera,
not to buy new textbooks, not to get new computers
(13:45):
for the learning lab. So the fact that we have
elected officials and administrators making those decisions and.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Then realizing you know what, actually.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
You know, you and I have to live on a budget,
but they can always go take on another nine figure
bond initiative. There has to be accountability brought back to
this system because we are failing our children and our
country is going to suffer as a result.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Do you think these union members even know what this
money is being spent on and where their dues are going.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I don't think so at all. I mean, you know,
teachers are like us.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Certainly there are a few bad apples that are activists,
but they're not all bad. But I very highly doubt
that there are teachers across America one hundred percent of
ANYA or AFT members that are okay with their money
going to groups like the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project
is the one that has been pushing the rental exclusion
policies that say parents don't have a right to know
their child's gender at school.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
There have been a number of lawsuits.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Brought by teachers against school districts saying I don't want
to keep secrets.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I am not comfortable with this.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Southern Property Law Center is another one that got money
from the union's media matters, the Clintons, both through the
Clinton Global Initiative and the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation
as well as the Hillary Victory Fund.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
I mean, she lost that election. Why were they spending
a million and.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
A half dollars, you know, propping up this Clinton edifice
NAACP color Change organization that called us all racist because
we wanted a colorblind education system.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
And so I just I don't think that many.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Teachers realize that that's where their money is going to.
I think they assume it's going to go towards you know, better, better,
more time off, better professional development opportunities, not towards this
hyper political nonsense.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And I know that you guys have also been a
part of, you know, fighting some of this, uh, you know,
with University Washington of you know, allowing facilities and in restrooms,
allowing men in women's restrooms and in private spaces, or
even at I think there was all an all women's
(15:39):
Smith or what is it all that all women's Smith
college admitting men.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Women's college. So to talk to just a little bit
about the work.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You guys are doing and trying to, you know, protect
women's spaces from men.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah, this has been a tremendously fun fight because it
is something where you look at where the American public
is eighty percent of people across the board, it's kind
of the low end believe that women, you know, sex
segregated spaces, bathrooms, locker rooms, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Sports should be separate, separate.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
And so we have filed civil rights complaining, We were
involved in a number of lawsuits including we still have
an open one against the Biden administration funny enough for
their unconstitutional Title nine rewrite, but filing civil rights complaints
and EEOC complaints to try and protect those students, to
protect those teachers that are being forced into things, being
forced to use students or their peers preferred pronouns when
(16:34):
they don't want to. That's compelled speech. I don't care
if you worship the spaghetti monster. You cannot be forced
to say somebody else's pronouns if you do not believe
in it, full stop.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And so that is the hill I will die on.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
But it's been fun to pursue these things, both in
the court of public opinion as well as in the
court of law, because you know, the constitutions on our side.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
It's also been pretty wild to see groups like ACLU,
which has like defended women's protections and you know Title
nine for forever now supporting men and women's sports. You no, Like,
it's kinda it's like, I don't know, we're living an
upside down world where all these previous defenders of women's
(17:15):
rights are now actively working against women. But I guess
that's the bizarro world we live in these days.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Yeah, no, it's it's really disappointing, but it's fun to
you know, call them that on things like that, just
like with the Southern poverty loss under stuff last week.
I mean, we were named a hate group in twenty
twenty three, which has been was a horrifying thing to
go through. But it turns out, okay, well, who was
actually the racist who was the one literally giving money
to the KKK. It wasn't me, it was you guys,
And so yeah, I think you know, the truth comes
(17:46):
out of the end, and there's egg on all these
liberal group spaces.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Absolutely, Nick Neelly, appreciate you, founder and president of Defending Education.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Appreciate your time. Thank you that was Nick k Neelly.
Appreciate her for coming on the show.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday,
but you can listen throughout the week.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Awesome one to thank.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
John Cass and my producer for putting the show together.
Until next time.
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