For over forty-five years, two labor unions have held a spiritual grip on the hearts and minds of the millions of students educated in our public schools. A stronghold made possible by President Carter, when he agreed to create a Department of Education (DoEd) in exchange for political support for his run for office. Billy Carter became President, and the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) became education’s major policy power brokers in the most powerful seat in our nation, at the Presidential Cabinet.

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Since 1980, the NEA and the AFT have operated as an extension of the Democrat party, interjecting liberal, progressive, ungodly policy into the hearts of millions of America’s brightest and most promising minds of students who occupied seats in our nation’s 99,000 public schools.

The unions’ reign of power was seldom questioned. Abandoning academics, the unions pushed social justice, LGBTQI+ ideology, anti-god, anti-family, and anti-American curricula in our schools at the federal level. Public schools had no option but to comply with federal policy.

President Trump’s dismantling of the DeEd cut off the NEA and the AFT’s significant policy power at the federal level. With the primary source of power gone, the unions mimicked the beheaded mythical Hydra snake by implementing two heads, enabling them to continue to carry on their evil agenda on two different fronts, potentially posing an even greater spiritual threat to our nation and our students.

Both unions plan to develop curricula that will continue to feed students the same liberal agenda they promoted at the Department of Education. A point made clear by NEA President, Rebecca Pringle, who recently announced that the NEA would continue to coach teachers to fight conservative parents, and paint Republicans as a racist threat.

The influence the NEA and the AFT held at the DoEd did not disappear; instead, they are regenerating it through two separate but spiritually dangerous strategies.

1. The NEA will expand and implement into public schools a curriculum based on Howard Zinn’s communist ideology that views people as oppressors or the oppressed.

Rebecca Pringle, the President of the NEA, recently announced that the NEA would partner with The Zinn Education Project (ZEP) to adapt its radical Communist ideas into lessons appropriate for K-12 students.

While teaching at Boston University in the 1980s, Howard Zinn wrote A People’s History of the United States. The content gives a radically different perspective of American history, with a negative focus on American leaders, while exploring the plight of what Zinn (who calls himself “a democratic socialist), “of ordinary people – workers, women, enslaved people, Native Americans, and other marginalized groups. Most of the curriculum exists on two websites: Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change. The Zinn Education Project boasts 176,000 teacher downloads and more than 765,000 lessons appropriate for students pre-K to grade 12. His book, A People’s History of the U.S. has sold over 2,000,000 copies.

2. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) will partner with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations (UN) to develop a new public-school curriculum.

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), also an extension of the Democratic Party, announced at the annual AFT meeting in June 2025, that the AFT would partner with the United Nations (UN) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) to develop a curriculum for America’s schools.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as one of the UN’s specialized agencies, will assume the primary responsibility for developing and distributing the global humanistic curriculum to teachers and students across 193 nations worldwide. The curriculum uses the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as its foundational teachings. UNESCO’s website already offers comprehensive downloadable toolkits suitable for classroom use on multiple topics, including Climate Change, Gender Quality, Global Societies, and Sexuality.

This opportunity is a big win for UNESCO, which has been searching for years for the financial backing to pursue a UN global curriculum. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has agreed to underwrite the cost of the massive project.

Do our children belong to the labor unions?

Recently, Chicago Teachers Union (AFT) president Stacey Davis Gates, while attending a City Club Chicago education event, bashed President Trump. Blaming the President for the failing state of Chicago schools. Ms. Gates then made a far-reaching claim: that the children who attended public schools belong to the union. She said, “The children are always ours. Every single one of them, all over the globe.”

The answer to the issues Christians face in public schools is a spiritual issue, and prayer is our answer. If America’s public schools are to be redeemed, it will be through the prayers of believers who recognize the intense spiritual battle we face.

Nancy Huff is an educator with a mission to equip believers to pray strategically for the Cultural Mountain of Education. She has authored Taking the Mountain of Education: A Strategic Prayer Guide to Transform America’s Schools,  Safety Zone: Scriptural Prayers to Revolutionize Your School, and Decrees for Your School. She leads prayer groups to pray at key educational locations across the U.S. For additional information, go to: https://takingthemountainofeducation.com/author/nancyahuff/

How are you praying for the Department of Education? Share your prayers and scriptures below.