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

Here's the latest red warning flag: The American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and other K-12 education unions are trying to take control of the AI-generated material students see.

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: more resources for students, and access to the next generation of customers for Microsoft and other AI providers. 

But the dirty secret, alleges a new research report from the watchdog group Defending Education, is that the unions want to alter the answers AI produces to ensure students are seeing not what is factually most accurate but instead what is politically correct.

The AFT is launching a nationwide training program for 10% of its teachers, paid for with $12.5 million from Microsoft and smaller grants from other AI companies. Defending Education claims that the plan includes embedding diversity, equity and inclusion ideology into the AI programs. The rationale is that this step must be taken because AI, having been designed by mostly white and Asian males, is biased.

Similarly, according to the Defending Education expose, the NEA mandates that local school boards integrate DEI into their AI programs.

The unions call the changes to AI "guardrails." In truth, unions want to block students from seeing actual, un-doctored facts about anything. Their mission 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. The National Assessment of Educational Progress reports that test scores on reading and math have steadily declined since 2013.

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 the leftwing goals of the unions in exchange for more business. 

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

Two months ago, the NEA launched its May Day 2026 toolkit for teachers, striking the theme "Workers Over Billionaires" and calling for a day with "no work, no school, no shopping." This is a holiday commemorated in communist countries. It doesn't belong in American classrooms.

Days after launching his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to halt federal funding going for schools that promote gender indoctrination, leftwing brainwashing and DEI.

To accomplish the same goal, on May 17, the House passed the "Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act," and a similar bill is now moving through the Senate.

Halting federal funding will help, but the fight has to be waged state by state, school district by school district.

It will be toughest in the 12 states where, according to a new Fordham University ranking, 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. In nearly all of these, Democrats control the governor's office and both legislative houses.

Unions' right to organize is protected by the First Amendment. But lawmakers in red or purple states can trim union power by passing state laws that limit what is bargained collectively, taking teacher promotions, performance evaluations, automatic dues collection and curriculum off the table, like Wisconsin did under former Gov. Scott Walker.

That's a blueprint for red and purple states. Lawmakers in these states should also ensure maximum competition with union-run schools by eliminating caps on charter schools, something New York Gov. and union sycophant Kathy Hochul refuses to do.

In New York, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman pledges to get "back to the basics," support parental rights and eliminate the Board of Regents, a statewide appointed body under the control of the state legislature. All good ideas.

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 and win 70% of the time in a typical state (90% of the time in New York state).

School boards are the most powerful decision-makers over school curriculum.

Republicans and other school reformers should intrude on these quiet, usually off-year local elections, back real reformers and expose the union shills for who they are. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pursued this strategy with considerable success.

Diminishing union power over what our children are taught 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 Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman & Founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths at www.hospitalinfection.org. 

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