Stop radicalizing California teachers teach the basics instead

The California Department of Education recently hosted a webinar entitled the “Black Student Achievement Series.” One might assume its contents would be about student achievement –– reading and math, strategies to close persistent learning gaps or new interventions based on the state’s recently adopted “Science of Reading” curricula. That’s not what California’s students and parents got.Instead, a webinar titled “Culturally Sustaining Practices to Recruit and Retain Black Teachers” represented a jarring bait-and-switch.Rather than offering tools for academic readiness, the program focused on dismantling what it described as the “oppressive system” of public education, advocating for “liberatory learning,” and dragging teachers into a rabbit hole of divisive, identity-centered ideologies.We sent a letter to the state Department of Education requesting comment about these trainings –– noting our concerns that they violated several legal protections across various administrative, statutory and constitutional frameworks –– but have yet to receive a response.This tragic misuse of state resources is business-as-usual for California’s education bureaucracy, which has been captured by teachers unions and their allies.California officially requires teachers to integrate Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) in the classroom. On paper, CRE appears to focus on a virtuous goal: augmenting student engagement by connecting students’ backgrounds to classroom lessons.The reality is this: The benign-sounding language of CRE is being used to smuggle radical activist training into public education.The core problem lies in a deliberate distortion of priorities.

Culturally Responsive Education is traditionally built on three pillars, the first two of which are cultural awareness and academic success.Yet, state-sponsored bureaucrats often disregard these in favor of the third pillar: “critical consciousness.” This pillar pushes an a...