The American Federation of Teachers wants educators deeply involved in the midterm elections, from monitoring polling places to knocking on doors for education-focused candidates, to running for office themselves. It’s focused on helping members implement the “science of reading,” and is wary of AI tools.
Those were some major themes from the 2026 AFT Convention, held this past weekend in the nation’s capital, where representatives of the nearly 1.9 million-member union met to plan policy and strategize. One of the underlying themes throughout the weekend meeting was AFT’s preparation for the looming midterm elections, which could reshape the legislative landscape affecting K-12 education and domestic policy at large.
“When I first became a teacher, I was not very political at all,” said Jen Mazzocco, a Pennsylvania state representative and former English teacher in Pittsburgh, speaking to more than 3,000 AFT delegates on Sunday, “but it didn’t take long for me to realize that if you are doing this job right, being apolitical is impossible. Educators see the inequities in our society walk through our classroom doors every day.”
Here are the biggest developments from the convention, which is held every two years. (The National Education Association has a business meeting every year, while the AFT trades off legislative and teaching conferences on alternate years.)
1. Delegates reelected Randi Weingarten for a 10th term
Delegates reelected President Randi Weingarten to a 10th two-year stint leading the organization. Unlike the NEA, the AFT does not place term limits on officers. Delegates also reelected Fedrick Ingram as secretary-treasurer, and Evelyn DeJesus as executive vice president.
First elected in July 2008, Weingarten’s tenure has been surpassed only by Al Shanker, who served as AFT president from 1974 through 1997.
2. AFT celebrated organizing successes, including among charter schools
AFT is the second-largest teachers’ union in the country (after the 2.8 million-member NEA). Weingarten told members on July 17 that AFT gained nearly 60,000 new members via in 179 new bargaining groups in the last year comprising active and retired early childhood, K-12, and higher education teachers and staff, as well as nurses and other healthcare and public workers.
Healthcare unions comprise the large majority of these new groups. In the K-12 sector, AFT has also made inroads organizing charter school teachers and support staff. Charter school staff made up the bulk of new K-12 unions, with nearly 20 new campuses. The charter school unions cluster in a few more union-friendly states—Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia.
Nina Bonaparte, a physical education teacher at Neighborhood House Charter School in Boston, said she helped organize an AFT affiliate at her campus to improve teacher retention amid rising housing costs in the area. “We wanted to make sure that it became a place where we could afford to like stay in the community where we were teaching,” Bonaparte said. “With our salaries that was becoming more and more difficult to do.”
It can be an uneasy fit; state and district charter authorizers often tacitly discourage teacher collective bargaining, delegates said.
Jen Conant, the charter division chairman for the Chicago Teachers Union, said teachers at charter schools in the city organized because “being part of a union allows you to push back against school closure much more effectively than if you’re not unionized.” But six of those charter schools are being reopened as Chicago district schools after their charter organizations shuttered them.
3. The union enacted plans to limit AI and improve reading
Delegates also approved a series of resolutions, including new commitments to improve early literacy and student and teacher mental health, oppose private school vouchers, and limit generative artificial intelligence.
The group unanimously approved a resolution to advocate for funding for evidence-based preschool through grade 3 literacy screening and supports focused on “phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary instruction, knowledge-building curriculum, writing, and engagement with rich, complex, and culturally relavent texts.”
“For far too long, the [reading] curriculum has been handed to us and frankly, we’ve been told to do damage and then called out for not being successful,” said Laura Franz, the president of the Albany, N.Y. public school teachers union, in introducing the resolution. As states have passed new laws requiring “science of reading” curricula, some teachers have voiced frustration over previously widespread professional development in now-debunked “whole language” approaches.
The delegates also codified a plan that the AFT announced in May to respond to AI—what Weingarten called “the most seismic industrial revolution of our time.”
Last year AFT partnered with major AI firms including Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI to develop teacher AI training. But Weingarten said the union is still negotiating with the firms around privacy protections and other safeguards for the technology. In May, Weingarten proposed a “device down, eyes up, hands on” plan for AI in schools.
Delegates voted to advocate for the plan’s steps to ban screens and online assessments in pre-K through grade 2, limit student use of AI, include AI-related protections in labor contracts and hiring practices, and advocate for a tax on AI developers.
Delegates also voted to align members’ pension investments with the union’s goals, including not investing in companies that work to privatize public sector jobs or oppose collective bargaining.
The resolution is intended to help pension trustees manage the risk of a potential AI bubble, Weingarten said, "... and how we salvage and how we sustain retirement income.”
