Add The California Post on Google 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.
Stock image of teacher holding a Pride flag to young students. Getty Images/iStockphoto 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 activist framework that tells teachers to view every classroom interaction through the lens of power dynamics, privilege and institutional oppression.
When teachers return from state webinars steeped in these ideas, the practical outcome is not a sudden surge in reading scores.
Instead, we see educators who teach young children that their most salient characteristic is their racial, ethnic and/or religious identity.
Those subscribing to CRE use this identity-first approach to promote a highly politicized and contested view of society –– one that assumes every interaction, historical fact and contemporary issue be viewed through the lens of power and grievance.
Students are encouraged to see existing institutions as oppressive systems they have a duty to challenge, dismantle or overthrow.
While cultural sensitivity is important, especially in a state as diverse as California, these frameworks promote the misguided notion that students can only succeed if their teacher shares their exact identity. The premise that effective learning depends entirely on matching lived experiences is fundamentally flawed.
What’s more, every dollar spent training a teacher to view public education as an oppressive system is a dollar not spent helping children read, write, do math and think independently.
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Yet millions of taxpayer dollars are poured into these state-hosted webinars, exorbitant consultant fees and administrative frameworks that advance political activism, rather than academic readiness, proficiency or student success.
The cost falls hardest on vulnerable children, who are left politically activated but academically neglected.
California must rescue Culturally Responsive Education from special interests and their extreme political agenda. As American public education faces a critical inflection point with students carrying near-infinite knowledge and intelligence in their pockets, schools must put academic success and critical thinking back at the center of the frame.
This means asking teachers to use cultural awareness not as an end in itself or as a tool for radicalization, but as a bridge to connect students with classroom activities and to help them understand our diverse nation.
Cultural awareness should mean celebrating pluralism, understanding diverse histories and experiences and cultivating mutual respect among all ethnic groups –– thereby reinforcing a shared democratic fabric.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Education must stop treating academic achievement with lip service.
Our schools have become battlegrounds for politics instead of institutions for learning.
It is time to reinvest in the baseline promise of public education: teaching every child, regardless of background, how to read, write, think and participate as a citizen in American democracy, rather than training kids to be pawns for partisan protest movements.
Our children do not need state-funded lessons in institutional despair. They need a quality public education that empowers them to fulfill their highest potential.
Josh Weiner is chief strategy office at the North American Values Institute (NAVI).
