Teaching for Change

In partnership with the left-of-center educational publisher Rethinking Schools, Teaching for Change produces the Zinn Education Project curriculum based on late socialist activist and historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.  ³ A 2024 report by the American Historical Association found that roughly one-quarter of middle and high school history teachers used Zinn Education Project materials in their classrooms. ⁴

Background

Teaching for Change (TfC) develops K-12 curricula, lesson plans, and classroom materials; operates teacher training sessions; and engages in advocacy to promote left-of-center, critical race theory-based education in American classrooms.  ¹ Its programs explicitly use K-12 education as a tool for indoctrinating students in “social justice” principles, to the point where it encouraged high school teachers to offer training in the “skills and strategies” of protest organizing after the 2016 presidential election.  ²

TfC was founded in 1990 as the Network of Educators on the Americas, changing its name to Teaching for Change in 2002. ⁵ It was originally focused on Central American history, specifically what its founding left-of-center activists described as the “the painful impact of U.S. foreign policy” in the region.  ⁵

While TfC has long had a strong focus on education in its home Washington, D.C. area, as of 2026, its operations were nationwide.  ⁵

Leadership

As of 2026, Deborah Menkart, a left-of-center activist who had worked at Teaching for Change since 1989, was the group’s executive director. ⁶

As of 2026, Tiffany Mitchell Patterson, manager of social studies at District of Columbia Public Schools, was the board secretary of Teaching for Change. ⁷

Zinn Education Project

For more details, see Zinn Education Project

The Zinn Education Project is a joint project of Teaching for Change and left-of-center educational publisher Rethinking Schools.  ³ It is a curriculum that teaches a socialist-aligned, class-based model of American history using the model of late socialist historian and activist Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States.  ³

The project is Teaching for Change’s largest program area, accounting for $724,360 of its $1.5 million in total expenses in 2024.  ⁸ It was also the primary driver of grants to the organization, with $1 million of its $1.8 million in revenues earmarked for the Zinn Education Project. ⁸

The Zinn Education Project runs seven main campaigns: Teaching the American Revolution, Teach Reconstruction, Teach Climate Justice, Teaching for Black Lives, Teach Truth (focused on America’s 250th anniversary), Teaching Rosa Parks, and Abolish Columbus Day. ⁹ It proactively reaches out to educators who have signed up to download materials and encourages them to implement those campaigns in their classrooms.  ⁹

The “Abolish Columbus Day Campaign” teaches that the United States should “stop celebrating the crimes” of Christopher Columbus, whom it said “enslaved and murdered people, destroyed cultures, and terrorized those who challenged his rule.” ¹⁰ Teaching for Change has a long history of antagonism to Columbus, going back to its publication of the book Rethinking Columbus in the early 1990s and series of teacher workshops of the same name.  ⁵

In 2024, researchers at the American Historical Association surveyed 3,000 middle and high school history teachers in nine states and found roughly one-quarter used Zinn Education Project materials in their classrooms. ⁴ TfC claims that more than 176,000 teachers use Zinn Education Project materials, and that its lesson plans have been downloaded more than 765,000 times. ¹¹

It has a close relationship with the National Education Association (NEA), which has made grants to TfC and co-hosted events to promote its programs. ¹²

Ideological Bias

Teaching for Change is explicitly ideologically biased toward left-of-center concepts of social justice, multiculturalism, colonialism, and critical race theory. ¹³ Its educational materials, training programs, and advocacy seek to promote those concepts in classrooms and communities across the country.  ¹³

It produces an “Anti-Bias Education” curriculum for early childhood educators, including children’s picture books, that broadly teach left-of-center critical race theory-based concepts of racial identity, power structures, and interactions between individuals. ¹⁴

Its materials on the American Revolution claim to “Decolonize 1776” and “teach truth about the American Revolution,” explicitly positioning them in competition to materials from right-of-center groups including “the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College, Moms for Liberty, PragerU, Turning Point USA, and more.” ¹⁵

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is the primary supporter of TfC’s Civil Rights Teaching program, which explicitly attempts to use lessons on the history of the civil rights movement in the United States to teach modern critical race theory-based principles, encouraging teachers to “serve as midwives for a more just and caring society.” ^{16  17} The primary teacher resource book for this program is titled Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching.  ¹⁶

In 2021, TfC hosted a “curriculum fair” for the annual week-long protest and educational event Black Lives Matter at School. ¹⁸

“#TeachResistance” Curriculum

After the 2016 presidential election, Teaching for Change published a series of lesson plans and materials for “teaching radical hope and resistance” among high-school students.  ²  These included materials opposed to “The President’s Agenda,” which it said included “climate change,” “civil liberties,” “Muslims,” “economic inequality,” and “media.”  ²

The #TeachResistance curriculum also included “Resistance 101” and “Organizing” modules, the latter explicitly advertising, “As students move from protest to organizing, they will need to learn the skills and strategies involved.”  ²

The curriculum also included a module on “White Identity,” saying that “This election has highlighted the need to study the history of institutionalized racism and the formation of white identity.”  ²

In addition to the curriculum materials, TfC also encouraged students and educators to rely on left-of-center media outlets Democracy Now! and Colorlines for their news coverage.  ^{2  19}

TfC has promoted these materials using photos of controversial activists such as national Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour and 20th-century radical Yuri Kochiyama, who declared her admiration for Osama bin Laden, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba because “they all had a severe dislike for the U.S. government and those who held power in the U.S.”  ^{2  20}

Funding

Teaching for Change is funded by a combination of grants and program service revenues.  ⁸ In 2024, it reported receiving $1,367,912 in grants, $186,368 in program service revenues, and $15,154 in investment income. ⁸

While it reported no government grants in 2024, it has received government funding in the past from the District of Columbia government and other sources. ²¹ In 2020, it reported $220,556 in government grants and a forgiven $99,079 loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program.  ⁸

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has been a significant supporter of TfC for many years, supporting its Zinn Education Project and other initiatives. In 2014, the Kellogg Foundation identified TfC as one of 30 “exceptional organizations” to receive its education grant funding. ²²

In 2022, it received a $35,000 grant from the PC Charitable Foundation, the charitable arm of the left-of-center Players Coalition organization founded by former National Football League players Anquan Boldin and Malcolm Jenkins. ²³

Other funders have included left-of-center financier and philanthropist George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the National Education Association (NEA) teachers union, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, New Venture Fund (NVF), Greater Washington Community Foundation, Seattle Foundation, Tides Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF), Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, American Endowment Foundation (AEF), Donor Advised Charitable Giving (DAFgiving360), American Online Giving Foundation, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, Target Foundation, CREDO Mobile (Working Assets), Communities for Just Schools Fund, Arca Foundation, Columbus Foundation, Fannie Mae Foundation, Edward W. Hazen Foundation, MetLife Foundation, Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, Peace Development Fund, Panta Rhea Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and Threshold Foundation. ^{24  25}