The Virginia Education Association emphasizes radicalism and resistance over reading and math.

by Victoria Manning

The Virginia Education Association (VEA), the state arm of the National Education Association, has no interest in educating your children. Instead, they want to push “advocacy and activism for educators”—a goal they stated explicitly and repeatedly throughout their November 2025 conference. The VEA indoctrinates educators whose public-school classrooms become incubators—creating future Democrat voters.

During the VEA’s Education Professionals in Collaboration Conference in November, the session topics and speakers focused on far-left social justice talking points, and virtually nothing about improving educational opportunities for Virginia’s kids.

The VEA’s event keynote speaker was non-binary author George M. Johnson whose book, All Boys Aren’t Blue, is found in schools across the nation. Leftists decry the removal of Johnson’s book from school library shelves despite its X-rated content. Excerpts include passages such as, “He reached his hand down and pulled out my d***. He quickly went to giving me ****. I just sat back and enjoyed it as I could tell he was too.” The book is filled with vile sexually explicit content that the VEA celebrates and pushes onto children.

The VEA claims it’s “book banning” if anyone opposes pushing this sexual propaganda onto minors. In fact, they recently promoted Johnson’s book as a way to “fight against censorship in our schools.”

Johnson’s controversial activism doesn’t end with the sexualization of children. He also instructs that America is systemically racist.

He authored, When Racism Anchors Your Health, claiming blacks have worse health outcomes because they “can’t buy whiteness.” Johnson claims that as a black man he experiences “trickle-down trauma of that first slave boat hitting the shore of Virginia” 400 years ago. He claims his HIV diagnosis is a social-justice and racial issue since a majority of HIV diagnoses are among “black queer folk.”

Such a radical conference speaker demonstrates the VEA’s clear agenda—activism outweighs academics.

The radicalism didn’t end with Johnson.

The 2025 VEA conference breakout sessions included:

• The Journey of Educators of Color
• From Resistance to Resilience
• Out in the Classroom: Virginia’s LGBTQIA+ Laws
• Political Advocacy and Activism for Educators
• Supporting Transgender Humans in School Settings
• Identities Cultural Humility & Family Partnerships

The VEA could have chosen a keynote speaker and session topics that address real educational issues such as a decline in literacy or student discipline problems. Instead, their narratives focus on political activism and resistance to Donald Trump.

The VEA restored harmful content removed by Gov. Youngkin

In 2021, after taking the helm as Governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin’s administration removed harmful online content pushed by the former education department.

Ralph Northam’s Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) promoted “EdEquityVA” activist resources. The VEA found these webinars so important that they posted them on their website after Youngkin removed them from state resources.

The webinars included a commemoration of the 20^th Anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks. Instead of memorializing the lives lost, the Northam VDOE proclaimed the anniversary would cause “increased anti-Muslim racism” against students. The webinar instructed educators to “disrupt these risks by centering the socioemotional needs of Muslims in their commemoration plans.” Educators were also instructed that “teaching is a political act.”

Another webinar called Grading for Equity tells educators that traditional A-F grading practices are not “equitable.” The so-called experts on grading decry teachers who assess homework completion as a portion of the overall grade. Teachers are told that zeroes should not be given for work not completed. Instead, they should give a minimum grade of 50. So, a student who takes a test and scores 50 percent, would get the same grade as a student who didn’t take the test at all.

One presenter in the webinar—Lynchburg City Schools teacher Erin Comninaki—professed that she held racist beliefs and said she was “on my own learning journey to reflect and question my racist bias and become a more equitable educator.” Comninaki “confessed” her sin that she previously graded students for their completion of work and averaged student performance over time—then she determined those were racist practices. She asserted that traditional grading practices reflect “white supremacist ideals and bias.” This teacher also admitted to allowing unlimited retakes on school assignments and documenting the highest grade achieved.

As a former school board member, I saw the negative impacts of “equitable” grading practices. When these methods of assessment were used in my division, teachers became concerned. They could no longer get students to complete their work because there were no consequences. Students didn’t study for tests because they knew they could retake them. Once students knew the questions, they memorized the answers. Teachers ultimately stopped assigning homework because students wouldn’t complete the assignments since there were no penalties.

With Democrats now in full control of Virginia, expect more content like these examples to come from the newly elected administration. All of the VEA’s $200,000 in political contributions went to Democrats in 2025 so clearly, VEA overlords will have influence in the upcoming General Assembly.

The Youngkin administration revamped student accountability measures to raise the bar on academic achievement. Democrats are already signaling they want to reduce those standards for Virginia schools. They want to bury the reality that Democrat education policies—pushed by the activist teachers’ union—fail all students.

Victoria Manning is a Senior Investigative Researcher for Restoration News specializing in education freedom, immigration, and military issues. This column has been republished with permission from Restoration News.