AMERICA’S SCHOOLS: ACTIVISM ACADEMIES
A classroom should be a place where students learn how to read, write, and think critically. Instead, too many schools have become pipelines for radical political activism. From the earliest grades, educators and unions are teaching children what to think, incorporating core academics with divisive ideologies on race, gender, and climate. Some of this indoctrination is subtle, allowing years of ideological shaping to take root in children’s impressionable minds.
Organizations like the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) have prioritized these practices while ignoring critical issues parents and students face, such as learning loss and declining test scores.
WHERE THE INDOCTRINATION BEGINS
The activism pipeline begins with the youngest students. In Philadelphia preschools, for example, teachers are telling young children that “expressions of racial prejudice often peak” in white kids around ages four and five.
Source: The Children’s Community School
Oregon carries this same divisive political framing straight into kindergarten, where the state’s 2026–2027 social science standards instruct students to “identify examples of unfairness or injustice.”
Source: Oregon Department of Education
The same divisive narrative is also evident in Connecticut public school resources aimed at second graders, such as the guide “How to Talk With White Kids About Racially-Charged Events” and a Sesame Street Town Hall featuring a 7-year-old explaining racism alongside footage of protesters chanting “Black Lives Matter!”
Source: Glastonbury Public Schools
Source: CNN
This approach extends beyond discussion guides into hands-on classroom simulations. In a Georgia elementary school, teachers placed “Whites Only” and “Colored” signs above water fountains and in the cafeteria, even after parents raised objections. In both cases, young children are being taught to interpret race, fairness, and public conflict through an activist moral script, with little to no regard for parental input.
Source: People
This is no accident. Teachers’ unions have spent years politicizing the profession long before most parents realized how early the fallout would reach their children. In our recent Lookout on Activist Teachers’ Unions exposing how the NEA and the AFT push radical resource libraries, training programs, and resolutions that promote racial justice, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and social justice classroom practices at the expense of parental rights and actual education. For example, the NEA’s “Schools in Transition” guide instructs teachers to introduce transgender topics and affirm students’ gender identities in the classroom without notifying or obtaining consent from parents.
Source: Freedom Foundation
This same union playbook is unfolding at an AFT affiliate in Chicago, where recently distributed curriculum brands President Trump a fascist, pushes an LGBTQIA+ book to Pre-K through second-grade students, and requires kids to identify “red lines” President Trump has crossed and commit to stopping him.
Source: X
This same radical gender ideology can be found across school districts nationwide. For example, in 2022, KOMU 8 News in Columbia, Missouri, reported the school board approved a ten-thousand-dollar grant for Rock Bridge High School Gay Straight Alliance from the It Gets Better Project to transform part of the school into a student-run closet containing gender affirming clothing such as packing underwear and chest binders.
Source: KOMU 8 News
New York schools are introducing it as early as kindergarten, with one district teaching children terms like “cisgender,” “transgender,” and “non-binary.” In 2024, New York Public Schools poured $202 million into “inclusive and affirming” curricula that recommended books like I’m Not A Girl: A Transgender Story for first graders.
Source: Defending Education
Howard County, Maryland, embedded a transgender agenda into classrooms by creating a formal reward system. Schools earn “Rainbow Ribbon” certification only by proving their classroom instruction “affirms LGBTQIA+ identities and contributions across grade levels and subjects.”
Source: Fox News
Elkridge Elementary School in Maryland won the award or the 2024-2025 school year with other schools, receiving credit for meeting some, not all, of the criteria.
Vermont’s fifth-grade curriculum in 2023 went so far as to instruct students to replace “male” and “female” with ““person who produces sperm” ” or “person who produces eggs.”
Source: WCAX
California’s 2024 sex education framework for fifth graders pushed further still, addressing gender roles and expectations while exposing children to content many parents describe as normalized pornography.
Source: Laura Powell
These lessons are producing exactly the outcome parents dread the most. Students are taking this radical ideology from their desks into the halls, turning school into a political battleground.
WALKOUTS, PROTESTS, AND CLUBS
The activism pipeline does not stop at the classroom door. Activists are helping students carry these lessons directly into organized walkouts and protests. Teachers’ unions are actively organizing this disruption. The NEA has poured nearly two million dollars into organizations that train teachers and students for May Day school “walk-ins” and protests.
In Oklahoma, high school students staged two walkouts after lawmakers passed a 2022 bill protecting girls’ spaces based on biological reality, chanting “trans people are not a threat.”
Similar protests erupted elsewhere over immigration enforcement. At an after-school protest led by a fourth grader from Grattan Elementary in San Francisco, California State Senator Scott Wiener told the crowd, “We need the next generation of leaders and activists to learn early.” A student described it as “like a field trip.”
Source: San Fransico Chronicle
In Baltimore, a high school senior and student government president organized a mass walkout involving hundreds of students from multiple schools against ICE.
Source: WBAL TV
The pipeline runs deeper through school clubs. At Berkeley High School, the Sunrise Club organized an anti-ICE protest featuring anti-ICE button-making and a “Trump piñata” that students took turns hitting and stomping. An eleventh-grade participant linked the event to climate change, claiming, “when dictatorship takes place, often the climate is not considered.”
Source: Instagram
LEGAL ACTIVISM
Activism can also be seen in the courtrooms where children are recruited as plaintiffs to advance the same radical agenda through lawsuits.
In another Lookout on Our Children’s Trust, we exposed how the organization pushes activist course materials and educator resources that emotionally manipulate children, promote climate hysteria, and teach climate law as a form of civic action. Not only does Our Children’s Trust push a specific climate agenda in schools; it uses that narrative to convince children to sign their names to lawsuits that push radical environmental mandates and dictate national energy policy.
In 2025, Our Children’s Trust filed Lighthiser v. Trump on behalf of 22 kids, several of whom were minors at the time of filing. The complaint leans heavily on climate hysteria, arguing “Plaintiffs were born into and now live in a destabilized climate system” and claiming that “Every additional ton of GHG pollution and increment of heat Defendants cause will cause Olivia [a child plaintiff] more harm.”
Source: Our Children’s Trust
The NEA and AFT joined PCUN v. Mullin (formerly PCUN v. Noem) alongside preschool families, suing to block ICE enforcement actions near schools. They argue such enforcement traumatizes young students, positioning the unions as protectors of minors while advancing political goals.
STOPPING THE ACTIVISM
From preschool lessons to student protests to federal lawsuits, what begins as “inclusive” education ends with minors recruited as foot soldiers in political and legal battles that parents never approved.
If parents are not diligent, this activism can permeate across their child’s education; however, there are ways to push back against this activism. Start by reviewing your child’s curriculum and assignments. Demand transparency from schools and teachers’ unions. Show up at school board meetings. Run for local office, and support candidates who put parental rights first. Children deserve an education that focuses on the fundamental principles of reading, writing, math, and science, not political activism.
TIPS FOR PARENTS
OTHER NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW
Thanks for reading the latest edition of the American Parents Coalition’s The Lookout. If you have a troubling story to share about a school, doctor, company, or other institution working to usurp parents’ rights, please let us know by emailing us at outreach@americanparentscoalition.org.
