$250,000 is spent by a California school on training “Woke Kindergarten” students as test subjects

Paresh Jadhav

11 months ago

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a California school paid the company Woke Kindergarten $250,000 to train its teachers on topics including white supremacy and oppression, including discussions around cessation fires, abolishments and strikes. Their curriculum features “woke words of the day” such as cessation fire, abolishment and strikes as part of its curriculum.

Zeus Leonardo of UC Berkeley believes his program does not seek to indoctrinate children but instead integrate politics into teaching framework. Others do not share his opinion.

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Training as a Test

One Bay Area elementary school spent $250,000 on a curriculum focused on progressive political ideology. Their Woke Kindergarten program taught teachers to combat white supremacy, disrupt racism, and remove barriers for students with low test scores – yet its impact has come under question after Glassbrook Elementary scores saw significant decreases on state tests.

District officials defended the Woke Kindergarten program, noting it increased classroom attendance and decreased suspension rates at Hayward school. They further claimed it removed it from a state watch list while using it as an example of how schools can use limited federal funds effectively.

But some teachers were critical of Woke Kindergarten due to its perceived political nature. Tiger Craven-Neeley is a self-described “gay moderate” who told The Chronicle about questioning training sessions on Woke Kindergarten which focused on disrupting whiteness within classrooms.

Training as a Model

Two years into its three year contract with for-profit Woke Kindergarten, Glassbrook Elementary in Hayward’s test scores have dropped dramatically. Glassbrook hired the organization to teach teachers how to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression and remove any barriers to learning that arise due to racism and oppression – something it does through “abolitionist education,” whose curriculum promotes anti-police, anti-capitalist and anti-Israel messages as reported by San Francisco Chronicle.

Teachers are frustrated by this program. Tiger Craven-Neeley, an educator from Glassbrook School District in Texas, told the newspaper that Woke Kindergarten trainings did not allow staff members to express their concerns and pose questions. One of its primary goals, according to him, was “disrupt whiteness”.

School district superintendent Jason Reimann defended his decision by noting that Woke Kindergarten was hired purely to increase attendance rates and eliminate suspensions, not because of its political content. Furthermore, Reimann noted that Woke Kindergarten no longer sits on any state list of underperforming schools.

Training as a Measure

One California elementary school is spending $250,000 on “Woke Kindergarten”, a program to train teachers to counter white supremacy and racism in the classroom. Glassbrook Elementary School in Hayward has implemented this initiative for two years with funding provided through federal programs intended to help low-performing schools improve test scores.

But instead of improving, students’ English and math scores have fallen significantly since adopting this curriculum. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, less than four percent of school’s students can read at grade level while just over twelve percent can perform at that level in math.

Woke Kindergarten at Glassbrook follows an “abolitionist education” philosophy, teaching children to fight oppressive structures like racism and white supremacy in everyday life. Some teachers at Glassbrook, however, are dissatisfied with its heavy emphasis on progressive activism and politics – they claim training sessions limit their teaching capacity; in one instance a white gay moderate teacher was banned for questioning certain parts of the program and was barred from future training sessions because his questions about it became too disruptive.

Training as a Prediction

After two years in its three year contract with Woke Kindergarten, Glassbrook Elementary School’s math and English scores have seen further declines; less than four percent of Glassbrook students can read above grade level while only 12 percent excel at mathematics.

The school reportedly spent approximately $250,000 on this program, which trains teachers on how to address learning barriers by challenging racism and oppression as well as pushing anti-police, anti-capitalism and anti-Israel messages. One teacher named Tiger Craven-Neeley believes it represents “abolitionist education”, making politics part of classroom discussions.

He claims his requests for clarification resulted in him being temporarily banned from training sessions and was told a primary goal of Woke Kindergarten is to “disrupt whiteness” in the classroom. While attendance and suspension rates improved after it was implemented, that doesn’t explain the drop in test scores.