Barely one in three Vermont fourth graders can read at grade level.
While those kids are falling behind, their teachers union just adopted a 33-page list of demands.
What the union put in those pages has a parental rights group demanding answers.
Vermont NEA Mandates Critical Race Theory and Transgender Athletes in Girls Sports
The Vermont-NEA – the state chapter of the National Education Association – held its 2025 Representative Assembly and produced a document that has almost nothing to do with teaching children to read.
A parents' watchdog group called Defending Education pulled the resolutions and made them public.
Start with sports.
"Vermont-NEA believes that all should have the opportunity to play recreational sports in accordance with their gender identity, irrespective of their gender assigned at birth, and to have their personal dignity respected," the document states.
Boys competing on girls teams – the union endorses it, officially, in writing.
Then comes the race mandate.
"Vermont-NEA believes that to achieve racial and social justice, educators must acknowledge the existence of White supremacy culture as a primary root cause of institutional racism, structural racism, and White privilege," the resolution reads.
This is not a suggestion. The union is demanding ideological compliance from every teacher it represents.
The document does not stop there.
"The invisible, racial benefits of white privilege, which are automatically conferred irrespective of wealth, gender, and other factors, severely limit opportunities for people of color and impede full achievement of racial and social justice," the resolution continues.
Therefore, Vermont-NEA declares, the union "will actively advocate for social and educational strategies fostering the eradication of institutional racism and white privilege perpetuated by white supremacy culture."
Every Vermont teacher is required to affirm that – while children fall further behind in the classroom.
The union's immigration position follows the same logic. Vermont-NEA "supports the creation of sanctuary cities and the right of these cities to refrain from asking persons about their immigration status" – shielding illegal aliens from the federal enforcement the Trump administration is actively expanding.
Three radical left-wing positions in 33 pages. Zero dedicated to reading proficiency.
Parental Rights Group Sounds Alarm as Vermont Reading Scores Hit Historic Low
Rhyen Staley, director of research at Defending Education, did not mince words.
"The fact that the state-level teachers union requires its members to 'acknowledge' that white supremacy culture permeates society shows just how ideologically captured the organization is," Staley said.
Then Staley highlighted the problem when union bosses are more interested in a political agenda than education.
"It should be deeply concerning for parents that members of the union are to accept the far-left conspiracy theory and to become activists while roughly half of the state's third graders are reading at below-proficient levels," he added.
Vermont's own numbers tell the story. Just 31% of the state's fourth graders cleared the reading proficiency bar on the 2024 National Assessment – the first time in state history Vermont has fallen below the national literacy average.
The union presiding over those classrooms spent its 2025 assembly mandating a political catechism.
Vermont's four-year graduation rate meanwhile fell from 89% in 2017 to 82% in 2025.
How the National NEA Turned Vermont Public Schools Into a Critical Race Theory Laboratory
Vermont-NEA did not craft this ideology on its own.
The national NEA formally adopted Resolution I-52 – enshrining the position that "White supremacy culture" is "a primary root cause of institutional racism, structural racism, and White privilege." Vermont's resolution lifts the language almost verbatim.
The national NEA's 2025–2026 training program, reviewed by City Journal, is loaded with LGBTQ+ justice sessions and racial equity workshops. Academic subjects are absent from the training calendar entirely.
The Heritage Foundation documented the pattern going back to 2021, when the national NEA approved a resolution to disseminate critical race theory materials that "critique empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism" – and several additional categories of political grievance.
This is not a local chapter going rogue. Vermont is executing the national blueprint.
The Washington Examiner documented the NEA's coordinated messaging strategy – an organized playbook designed to run sex-change sports ideology through the nation's classrooms under the banner of civil rights.
Vermont parents who assumed their teachers union existed to teach children reading and arithmetic are discovering something different.
Academic results keep falling. Vermont-NEA made its choice – and it was not reading scores.
Sources:
- Fred Lucas, "Vermont Teachers Union Pushes Gender Identity in Sports, Raises Alarms About 'White Privilege'," The Daily Signal, September 21, 2026.
- "Nation's Largest Teachers Union Rolls Out 'Race Class Narrative' Playbook on Transgender Issues," Washington Examiner, December 2, 2025.
- "The Absurdity of the Nation's Largest Teachers' Union," City Journal, December 2, 2025.
- "Unions Double Down on Inserting Critical Race Theory Into Education," The Heritage Foundation, July 6, 2021.
