Proposed resolutions under consideration at the annual convention for the American Federation of Teachers this week include vows to support critical race theory, classroom discussions on gender identity and sexual orientation, and demands for student loan forgiveness.
Set to begin Thursday in Boston, Massachusetts, the long list of resolutions the nation’s second largest teachers union will review touches on a wide range of topics in such a way that some parent activists noted that the union’s agenda may as well reflect the platform of the Democratic Party.
“One would be hard-pressed to distinguish this list of resolutions from the Democratic Party’s wish list,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for the parent activist group Parents Defending Education, told the Washington Examiner. “Solidarity with Ukraine, divest from fossil fuels, opposition to U.S. sanctions on Cuba, anything about ensuring adequate and effective reading instruction? Nope. Ensuring that children are numerate? Nope. Teaching students basic civics? Nope. The word ‘equity’ is all over the document, but teaching children to read didn’t make the cut.”
Ian Prior, the executive director of the political action committee Fight for Schools and a senior adviser at America First Legal, likewise said the document “is chock full of leftist policy recommendations that have absolutely nothing to do with schools.”
Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT and a fixture of Democratic Party politics, was a particular source of Prior’s ire.
“At this point, Randi Weingarten and the AFT have zero credibility with parents across America,” he said. “Not only were they one of the key drivers to keep schools closed, but their commitment to critical race theory, gender theory, and elevating government-run schools over the rights and choices of students and parents has only bolstered what we have known for years — teachers unions do not care about children. They only care about their out-of-touch political agenda.”
The list of resolutions the union is slated to review was introduced by various local chapters of the union, as well as the organization’s executive council, and is assigned to the various committees organized within the union.
“Culturally Responsive” testing and grading
The “Educational Issues Committee” will review nine resolutions. One resolution, proposed by numerous state chapters, calls for “Equity Through Culturally Responsive, Balanced Assessment Systems,” which calls for “the development of … culturally responsive, classroom-based assessment practices” and the dismantling of “testing regimes that have gone too far.”
Other resolutions before the Educational Issues Committee include calling for a “Green Schools Campaign,” “Fulfilling the Promise of Educational Opportunity and Equity,” “Defend[ing] the Teaching Profession and LGBTQIA+ Educators and Students Against Proliferating Anti-LGBTQIA+ Measures,” and for schools to “implement Developmentally Appropriate Grades 3-8 Assessments that Meet Students’ Needs.”
Canceling student loans
Five resolutions are before the Higher Education Committee, including one that calls for a “Department of Education Study of Adjunct/Contingent Pay and Benefit Inequity” and another one that calls on President Joe Biden to cancel all federally held student loans before the moratorium on payments and interest expires on Aug. 1.
The resolution claims “Biden has full executive authority to cancel all federal student debt using his powers of executive order” and that doing so would serve as an economic stimulus and provide an “enormous economic opportunity for local and state municipalities to increase spending in their local communities.”
Critical race theory and Florida’s parental rights law
“Defeat Anti-LGBTQIA+ ‘Don’t Say Gay’ and Anti-Transgender Bills and Attacks with Mass Pride and Mass Action” is one of the six resolutions before the AFT’s committee on human rights and international relations.
The resolution, proposed by the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, said the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, which has been dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” by opponents, is a “green light to anti-LGBTQIA+ bigots, Trump supporters, and neo-fascists to repress LGBTQIA+ students and all youth rights.”
The law prohibits schools from providing classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity from preschool to third grade.
“The leadership of LGBTQIA+ youth and allies has been critical to defending all civil rights and human rights against attacks, including by the proto-fascist Trump movement over the next years,” the resolution reads.
Sanzi said AFT’s proposals would inject politics into the classroom.
“Most parents, including a majority of Democrats, don’t want any instruction in school about sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-3,” Sanzi said. “These resolutions fly in the face of that. Parents want their children to learn the basics with classroom instruction that is free from partisan politics. This document seeks [to] turn schools into hyperpolitical and ideological places where actual learning is not even a priority.”
Other resolutions the committee is considering include an executive council proposal for “Solidarity with Ukraine,” three resolutions related to supporting Asian Americans, and a resolution calling for “Anti-Racism and Culturally Responsive Curriculum as a School Priority.”
Anti-racism and culturally responsive instruction are phrases commonly associated with the incorporation of critical race theory into class instruction, a theory that argues that U.S. institutions and culture are systemically racist and oppressive to racial minorities and must be dismantled through anti-racism in order to achieve racial equity.
Opposing sanctions on Cuba
While several of the seven resolutions before the union’s labor and economy committee are less controversial calls for “teaching and learning about labor” and there’s a resolution supporting apprenticeship programs and career and technical education, among the resolutions is a declaration of opposition to U.S. sanctions on Cuba, as well as a condemnation of school choice programs.
Resolution 23 “in opposition to U.S. Sanctions on Cuba” is one of the 14 times that Trump is referenced by name in all of the proposed resolutions. In contrast, Biden is name-dropped only eight times in the collection of resolutions.
The resolution touted Cuba’s healthcare industry and international relief efforts during epidemics, claiming that “the pandemic has shown that international cooperation is essential for public health” while praising the communist island nation for leading the way in “medical internationalism and solidarity.”
The resolution also claims that the United States has “consistently worked to undermine the progress demonstrated … in … educational and medical areas.”
The committee will also consider a resolution demanding more government oversight of social media companies in order to “protect our children, protect privacy, and save our democracy.”
Transgender athletes in women’s sports
The eight resolutions before the union’s political action and legislation committee are the most politically charged. Resolutions before this committee include a commitment “to the Defense of Democracy in America,” two slightly different resolutions demanding legislation that divests the nation from fossil fuels, support for a carbon tax, and opposing “the privatization of medicare.”
The committee will also review a resolution that condemns states that have passed bills requiring student-athletes to compete in sports based on biological sex, not on gender identity.
“The laws banning transgender youth from participating in sports (many suspiciously named the ‘Fairness in Women’s Sports Act’) deny the existence of nonbinary and intersex persons, define sex ‘based solely on an individual’s reproductive organs, biology or genetics at birth’, disregard the association of gene expression and endocrinology with sex, solely for the purpose of excluding transgender and nonbinary youth from interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams that are sponsored by a public primary or high school or a public institution of higher learning,” the resolution says.
Abortion and a “far-right” Supreme Court
The union’s women’s rights committee is set to review three resolutions that all condemn the Supreme Court for its ruling overturning Roe v. Wade last month. The resolutions were proposed by the AFT’s Executive Council, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, and the Chicago Teachers Union.
The proposal from the Berkeley chapter adopts the strongest language, claiming that “Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees and far right-wing control of the court are pivotal to the Trump movement achieving its objectives.”
“The Supreme Court is thoroughly compromised. The three Trump associate justices constitute an ongoing far right-wing coup inside the nation’s highest judicial body, and clearly intend to use their undemocratic power to overturn progressive legislation for decades to come,” the resolution says.
Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch are all mentioned by name in the resolution.
