Glassbrook Elementary School in Hayward, California is being scrutinized for its poor academic performance after hiring a leftist company to train its teachers. Reports from The Daily Wire reveal that by last spring, fewer than 4% of the 474 students at Glassbrook were proficient in math, and under 12% achieved proficiency in English.
Rather than allocating resources towards programs focused on improving math and English proficiencies, Glassbrook opted to use $250,000 of federal aid designated for struggling schools to enter a three-year agreement with a company called “Woke Kindergarten.” The company hosted teacher training on subjects such as white supremacy and oppression, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
“This case is incredibly sad and disappointing, but not surprising. Prioritizing woke ideology over real education leads to poorer outcomes for students. School officials are doing these students a grave disservice by training kids to become revolutionaries rather than focusing on instilling the knowledge, morals, and skills these children will need to succeed,” said Greg Burt, Vice President of the California Family Council.
The curriculum from Woke Kindergarten, applicable to all 474 students at Glassbrook Elementary, features a “woke word of the day,” with terms such as “strike,” “ceasefire,” and “protest.” The goal is to familiarize children with a “language of the resistance” or a “liberatory vocabulary” in a manner that is accessible, comprehensible, and, applicable in their “critiques of the system.”
Woke Kindergarten states on its website that its objective is to “support children, families, educators, and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation.”
Glassbrook has utilized the services of Woke Kindergarten for two years within a three-year agreement. During this period, the already declining academic performance of the school’s students has worsened. Both English and math proficiency rates have dropped by four percentage points.
A majority of the students at Glassbrook are from low-income backgrounds. Approximately two-thirds of the student body are English language learners, and over 80% are of Hispanic heritage. Since 2020, the school has been monitored by the state for enhancement and was recently demoted to the lowest tier of performance this academic year.
Several teachers at Glassbrook have criticized Woke Kindergarten for its strong emphasis on progressive activism. One teacher who identifies as a “gay moderate” and had previously sued the district over restrictions on discussing his husband and LGBT history expressed concerns about the program’s relevance. He questioned the meaning of “disrupt whiteness” in a third-grade context and faced temporary exclusion from training for his inquiries. He was even told that expressing “white guilt” was not the purpose of these sessions.
This teacher also raised questions during a session in which the phrase “so-called United States” was used and challenged content on Woke Kindergarten’s site, including discussions on a world without police, money, or landlords. Another teacher observed that dissent was unwelcome, commenting, “It slowly became very apparent if you were a dissenting voice that it’s not what they wanted to hear.” They lamented the missed opportunity to improve reading scores, noting, “That could have gotten us a reading interventionist.”
The focus on progressive activism at the expense of basic literacy and numeracy is deeply unfair to students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds who stand to lose the most from such an educational approach. The situation at Glassbrook is a call to action for parents, educators, and policymakers to demand that student achievement and well-being be the priority at California schools. The future of our children and the integrity of our educational system are too important to be overshadowed by any ideology.
