Fully Funded, Fully Failing
Teacher unions are good at pushing woke, not so good at pushing reading and writing.
Governor Laura Kelly likes to boast that Kansas schools have been “fully funded for seven years in a row.” That sounds impressive—until you look at the results. Student achievement is falling, standards are slipping, and outcomes are worse than ever before. Kansans are paying more, but our children are learning less.
Why? Because teachers unions and the bureaucracies they empower are not in the business of educating kids anymore. They are in the business of pushing ideology, protecting the status quo, and rejecting conservative values.
More Money, Worse Results
Year after year, lawmakers funnel billions into public education. Yet instead of improved reading and math scores, we get more administrators, more bureaucracy, and more excuses. The teachers union blocks reform at every turn while demanding more money while at the same time, lowering standards.
Where does it go? Into layers of administrators with inflated salaries, many holding doctorates (paid to universities that are rife with woke ideology1) that saddle them with debt and justify sky-high paychecks. These administrators are not in classrooms teaching children. They are in offices writing policies—and more and more, those policies push a woke, leftist agenda.
Replacing Values with Ideology
This is the heart of the problem. Teachers unions in Kansas have abandoned their supposed mission to represent teachers and support students. Instead, they are working to erase traditional values and replace them with a brand of socialist talking points dressed up as education policy.
Instead of teaching kids how to think, they’re teaching them what to think. Instead of raising standards, they’re lowering them in the name of “equity.”2 Instead of defending teachers who just want to focus on academics, unions push them to embrace the latest progressive fad—diversity quotas, gender ideology, and anti-American history lessons. Union member communications are more likely to be pushing a No Kings Day protest than to be sharing best teaching tactics.
Who Benefits?
Not the teachers. Many Kansas teachers feel trapped, overworked, and under-supported, even as their so-called union leaders cash checks and climb the ladder into cushy administrative jobs.
Not the students. They’re the ones graduating without the tools they need to succeed—products of an educational system more focused on politics than performance.
The only ones who benefit are union bosses and bureaucrats who get bigger salaries and more power by keeping the system broken.
The Conservative Alternative
Kansas doesn’t need more woke lectures. It doesn’t need indoctrination unions or more bureaucracy. What we need is a return to conservative principles in education:
Parents first – Families, not unions, should direct the values taught in schools.
Accountability – Hold districts responsible for results, not just funding formulas.
Higher standards – End social promotion and restore rigor to the classroom that includes excellent core curriculum.
Local control – Stop letting unions dictate Kansas classrooms.
Support for teachers – Empower teachers to focus on academics without political mandates.
Final Thought
The teachers union has revealed its true mission: not to teach kids, not to support teachers, but to reshape Kansas into its woke, socialist vision. That vision is failing students, draining taxpayers, and erasing the values that built our state.
Kansas conservatives must push back. Our children deserve better. Our teachers deserve better. And our future depends on rejecting the failed promises of the union and returning to the proven values that make Kansas strong.
Multiple public systems now bake DEI into degree requirements—e.g., California State’s AB-1460 ethnic-studies mandate and SUNY’s new ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice’ gen-ed category
A 2025 experimental study of nearly 5,000 faculty found DEI statements that foreground race and gender score higher in hiring evaluations—suggesting ideological screens.
Kansas’ own Board of Regents has responded by prohibiting mandatory DEI pledges in hiring and promotion across state universities.
A recent teacher’s union generated communication to Kansas state legislators reads:
I urge you to reject the Trump Education Department’s attempt to force MAGA propaganda into our public schools.
This week, Secretary Linda McMahon announced that $137 million in federal education funds, originally designated to support minority students and teacher training, will instead be diverted to develop a “civics” curriculum designed by Trump’s political allies, including PragerU, Hillsdale College, and Turning Point USA.
These organizations have a clear record of producing revisionist content that whitewashes slavery, denies systemic racism, and distorts American history to fit a far-right agenda. Trump’s allies have even proposed model laws that require the glorification of the Founding Fathers while banning the teaching of systemic racism or gender identity.
This is indoctrination. Our schools should teach students to think critically, not to repeat propaganda lines.
I urge you to take immediate action to block this dangerous curriculum in our state. Public schools must remain places of truth, inclusivity, and freedom, not tools for authoritarian whitewashing.