Never lacking in controversy, particularly with regard to education, the state of Minnesota is doubling down on its woke social justice agenda that many view as little more than politically motivated race baiting. Last month, the state’s NEA affiliate, the Minnesota Education Association (MEA), created a stir by offering professional development courses for teachers on topics such as “Interrupting Whiteness” and “LGBTQ+ Training.”

This divisive initiative for teachers, called MEA FIRE - Facing Inequities and Racism in Education, “aims to disrupt systemic racism and racial inequities in Minnesota’s education system.” The MEA website explains that the FIRE training program “leads Minnesota’s educators in a movement to live equitably and practice recognizing and responding to inequities and injustices.”

The website encourages teachers to work with FIRE in their own districts to “transform public schools into more equitable institutions.” It instructs teachers to request that these “equity trainings” be brought to their schools through their union locals, as well as by accessing sessions on MEA Online, where the choices include:

• Culturally Responsive Teaching with a Racial Justice Lens
• Cultural Competency (a four-part equity training that satisfies the cultural competency relicensure requirement)
• Interrupting Whiteness
• LGBTQ+ Training

The Daily Caller News Foundation explained that Minnesota educators “are required to fulfill a ‘cultural competency’ training in order to renew their teaching licenses, which can include topics such as ‘Systemic Racism,’ ‘Gender Identity, Including Transgender Students,’ ‘Language Diversity,’ and more.”

A November 27 post on X shared the Libs of TikTok’s exposé of the MEA training program, where the Libs asked rhetorically, “Why do they hate white people?” The parent who reposted the item noted: “I just want Minnesota kids to be able to read and write at grade level,” which sparked many parents to acknowledge the tragedy that basic skills are no longer emphasized or even taught in some schools.

‘Equity EdCamps’

But the MEA’s efforts are not necessarily locally grown. For example, the website describes training programs called Race “Equity EdCamps” as “organic, participant-driven professional learning experiences for educators across the country and worldwide.” The camps are day-long events scheduled by “organizers” but which are allegedly “participant driven.”

Although the Edcamps cover many topics and focus on technology, the parent company, Digital Promise, states that its three impact goals “are equity-focused” and that the organization centers its work “on equity for those farthest from opportunity, utilizing the power of networks to accelerate innovation....” The intent to improve the lives of less fortunate students may appear laudable, but it’s easy to imagine how Race Equity Edcamps can be steered to reflect far-left, racially divisive themes.

Meanwhile, as noted in countless news reports about low student test results nationally, Minnesota’s public-school students regularly score below proficient in reading and math. The Daily Caller noted that in 2024, “more than half of 4th-grade students in Minnesota tested below the national proficiency standard” in math, with “66% of 8th graders testing below proficient in math, and 72% testing below proficient in reading.”

NEA influence

It’s doubtful that the MEA or any other NEA state affiliate is creating training programs such as FIRE in a vacuum. For example, Fox News reported last month about an upcoming training session sponsored by the NEA and scheduled to take place in December that would “instruct members on how to go through a gender transition at work, including best practices for using gender pronouns and combating transphobia, while also being provided with literature labeling conservative opposition as ‘villains.’”

The NEA’s UniServ and Organizing Training Program List for 2025-2026 spells out its radical options for staff and members, including both in-person and online training events. Some of its “Focus Academies” program titles include:

• Organizing on HBCU Campuses (Historically Black Colleges and Universities)
• Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice
• Advancing Racial Justice
• Winning School Board Elections
• Organizing with ESP (Education Support Professionals)

These sessions all appear poised to impart and/or reinforce far-left ideology. Under “Advancing Racial Justice,” for example, the following tidbits indicate the training will:

• Establish a common language for talking explicitly about white supremacy culture in a campaign cycle
• Deepen skills and strategies to confront implicit bias, micro-aggressions, and stereotypes
• Develop a shared understanding of the levels of racism with a focus on a power analysis required to make change at various levels
• Develop a toolset of tactics for dismantling systems of privilege and oppression

The Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice training program lists similarly inflammatory topics, including how to “deepen skills and strategies to confront implicit bias, micro-aggressions and stereotypes in the LGBTQ+ community,” and how to develop tactics “for dismantling systems of privilege and oppression as it relates to LGBTQ+ educators and students.”

Defending Education’s investigative reporter, Kendall Tietz, told Fox News Digital that “the NEA is sending the wrong message to both educators and students” with these training materials. Tietz said: “Every time we get a look behind the curtain at the National Education Association, its priorities are unmistakable: a race-based, gender-ideology-driven model of activist education.”

NEA handbook exposes real agenda

Last July, the American Culture Project’s senior fellow, Corey DeAngelis, called attention to the NEA’s handbook, which exposes the union’s radical agenda and “was removed from the internet” after he leaked its contents on X.

The 2025 issue of the handbook, which Education Reporter referenced briefly in November, “is a blueprint for extremism, not education” DeAngelis wrote. He explained that the handbook insists upon educators acknowledging “the existence of white supremacy culture as a primary root cause of institutional racism, structural racism, and white privilege,” and demands that school districts “provide training in ‘cultural competence, implicit bias, restorative practices, and racial justice.’”

DeAngelis said the handbook also calls for “illegal racial quotas” that prioritize “identity over merit, dividing teachers and distracting from student needs.” Even the NEA’s 2025 Teacher of the Year, Ashlie Crosson, admitted at the annual NEA convention in July that teaching is “deeply political.” Presumably, Crosson’s politics are acceptably leftist in view of the honor she received from the nation’s largest teachers’ union.

Given the tone and rhetoric of the NEA’s training manual and materials, is it any wonder the Minnesota affiliate has drawn fire over its “professional development” offerings? Of course, the MEA has the backing of its highest elected state official, Gov. Tim Walz, who signed legislation into law to fund these types of “race-based teacher trainings” and extremist “ethnic studies” curricula with which to propagandize and divide Minnesota’s schoolchildren. (See Education Reporter, October 2025.)

STUDENT Act would curb NEA

Last July, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) introduced H.R. 4658, the “Stopping Teachers Unions from Damaging Education Needs Today STUDENT Act.” This legislation notes that the NEA “was chartered in 1906 by an Act of Congress (34 Stat. 804, chapter 3929) to elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching; and to promote the cause of education in the United States.”

The bill’s text then observes that the NEA “can no longer be considered a patriotic or national organization worthy of its Federal charter as it has drifted substantially from its core mission and become a massive political operation dedicated to electing Democrats and imposing a radical progressive agenda on the schools of the United States.”

The STUDENT Act aims to do more than revoke the union’s charter. The text notes that at its annual assembly in July, NEA members “voted against adding a business item to the organization that stated: ‘The National Education Association will rededicate itself to the pursuit of increased student learning in every public school in America by putting a renewed emphasis on quality education. NEA will make student learning the priority of the association.’”

This failure to approve an obviously necessary resolution to address the failure of public schools to teach basic skills, while at the same time voting to support “abortion, illegal immigration, and expanding professional development for educators to help create student Gender Sexuality Alliance clubs,” provided additional impetus for H.R. 4658.

The bill’s text further documents the NEA’s spending on political activities and lobbying, as well as calling out an expenditure of $56,500 for “researching and shaming organizations fighting the inclusion of critical race theory in schools.”

After detailing the egregious activities of the NEA, the STUDENT Act then lists the steps it would mandate to reshape the union. As Corey DeAngelis described:

• The STUDENT Act is a kill shot. Unlike revoking the NEA’s charter — a symbolic jab that wouldn’t stop its antics — this bill dismantles its power. It bans lobbying and political activity, choking off its Democratic pipeline. It ends racial quotas, ensuring merit-based leadership. It mandates annual reports to Congress.... It prohibits strikes, keeping schools open for nearly 50 million students. It scraps the NEA’s D.C. property tax exemption and requires informed consent for dues, ending automatic deductions.

Currently, the STUDENT Act remains in the House Committee on the Judiciary and no further action has been taken to move it along. In the meantime, the NEA continues to abuse its privilege and spread its poison.

Parents and concerned citizens may wish to contact their representatives and urge them to support H.R. 4658. Currently, there are 25 Republicans and 19 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee and the chairman is Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

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