A Hayward elementary school struggling to boost low test scores and dismal student attendance is paying $250,000 for an organization called Woke Kindergarten to train teachers to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression and remove those barriers to learning.
The Woke Kindergarten sessions train teachers on concepts and curriculum that’s available to use in classrooms with any of Glassbrook Elementary’s 474 students. The sessions are funded through a federal program meant to help the country’s lowest-performing schools boost student achievement.
But two years into the three-year contract with Woke Kindergarten, a for-profit company, student achievement at Glassbrook has fallen, prompting some teachers to question whether the money was well-spent given the needs of the students, who are predominantly low-income. Two-thirds of the students are English learners and more than 80% are Hispanic/Latino.
English and math scores hit new lows last spring, with less than 4% of students proficient in math and just under 12% at grade level in English — a decline of about 4 percentage points in each category.
Efforts to reach the organization were not successful, with an automated response saying the founder, who also provides the training, was recovering from surgery.
District officials defended the program this past week, saying that Woke Kindergarten did what it was hired to do. The district pointed to improvements in attendance and suspension rates, and that the school was no longer on the state watch list, only to learn from the Chronicle that the school was not only still on the list but also had dropped to a lower level.
The decision to bring in Woke Kindergarten, rather than a more traditional literacy or math improvement program, aligns with the belief by some parents and educators that the current education system isn’t working for many disadvantaged children.
The solution, these advocates say, is for educators to confront legacies of racism and bias in schools, and to talk about historic white supremacy, so that students feel safe and supported. As such anti-racism programs have spread, several more conservative state legislatures have moved to restrict or ban them.
At the same time, some education experts say struggling schools need research-based literacy and math interventions that ensure all students have the basic skills to succeed. Examples of success include San Francisco’s John Muir Elementary, which has piloted a math intervention program that has led to a more than 50% proficiency rate, up from 15% prior to adopting the coaching and student-led coursework.
Woke Kindergarten, aimed at elementary-age students, is founded on the relatively new concept of abolitionist education, which advocates for abolition, or “a kind of starting over,” said Zeus Leonardo, UC Berkeley education professor. The idea is that certain things can’t be reformed, tweaked or shifted, because they are inherently problematic or oppressive. It’s not about indoctrinating or imposing politics, “but making politics part of the framework of teaching,” Leonardo said.
But some Glassbrook teachers have questioned the decision to bring in the program, saying Woke Kindergarten is wrongly rooted in progressive politics and activism with anti-police, anti-capitalism and anti-Israel messages mixed in with the goal of making schools safe, joyful and supportive for all children.
This tension is reflective of the nation’s ongoing culture wars, where the right and the left battle to influence what happens in classrooms.
The Woke Kindergarten curriculum shared with schools includes “wonderings,” which pose questions for students, including, “If the United States defunded the Israeli military, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?”
In addition, the “woke word of the day,” including “strike,” “ceasefire” and “protest,” offers students a “language of the resistance … to introduce children to liberatory vocabulary in a way that they can easily digest, understand and most importantly, use in their critiques of the system.”
Teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley said he supports discussing racism in the classroom, but found the Woke Kindergarten training confusing and rigid. He said he was told a primary objective was to “disrupt whiteness” in the school — and that the sessions were “not a place to express white guilt.” He said he questioned a trainer who used the phrasing “so-called United States,” as well as lessons available on the organization’s web site offering “Lil’ Comrade Convos,” or positing a world without police, money or landlords.
Craven-Neeley, who is white and a self-described “gay moderate,” said he wasn’t trying to be difficult when he asked for clarification about disrupting whiteness. “What does that mean?” he said, adding that such questions got him at least temporarily banned from future training sessions. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?”
Another Glassbrook teacher said Woke Kindergarten offered one perspective on issues and that there was no tolerance for questions. “It slowly became very apparent if you were a dissenting voice that it’s not what they wanted to hear,” said the teacher, who requested anonymity for fear of pushback at the school.
The teacher did not find the training helpful or productive. “Our reading scores are low,” they said. “That could have gotten us a reading interventionist.”
Hayward Superintendent Jason Reimann said the decision to hire Woke Kindergarten, which was approved by the school board, was made by the school community, including parents and teachers, as part of a federal improvement plan to boost student achievement by improving attendance.
The school community, including parents, teachers and staff, identified a provider to help them do that, Reimann said. He noted a subsequent improvement in student attendance, with 44% of students considered chronically absent last year, down from 61% the year prior. A similar improvement was seen districtwide.
Glassbrook has been on the state’s Comprehensive School Improvement list since 2020, slightly improving in 2022 and then being reassigned to the lowest-performing level this school year.
Reimann said the district didn’t hire Woke Kindergarten for its politics, but rather its work in restorative practices, helping eliminate suspensions and removals from classrooms while luring more students back into seats.
“We are in favor 100% of abolishing systems of oppression where they hold our students back,” he said. “What I do believe is we should pick providers based on their work and how effective they are.”
The superintendent said Woke Kindergarten wasn’t hired to improve literacy and math scores, but that “helping students feel safe and whole is part and parcel of academic achievement.” He added, “I get that it’s more money than we would have liked to have spent.”
Woke Kindergarten was founded by former teacher Akiea “Ki” Gross, who identifies as they/them and describes themselves as “an abolitionist early educator, cultural organizer and creator currently innovating ways to resist, heal, liberate and create with their pedagogy, Woke Kindergarten.”
They established the for-profit company in 2020 in Maryland, although the Woke Kindergarten website says it is “primarily community sustained” and relies “primarily on donations.”
Education policy experts said that while the name of Gross’ organization and the words “abolitionist education” were provocative, many parents, teachers and others are feeling politically empowered after pandemic battles over masking and when to reopen schools.
“It doesn’t feel necessarily new, but more common right now is that some schools and some leaders are being intentionally provocative,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank. It feels, he said, like people are “leaning into these culture battles in schools,” whether on the left or right, although he said he couldn’t speak specifically about Woke Kindergarten.
And to a degree, these battles — whether over book bans, LGBTQ issues or the war in Gaza — are expected given schools are largely under local control, meaning they reflect their communities, said Joseph Kahne, professor of education policy at UC Riverside.
“How loud particular groups have become on the left and right and how organized and commercialized these agendas have become, that seems new,” said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley education professor.
Julie Marsh, a professor of education policy at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, cautioned that it can be “problematic when teaching strays too far into the political ideology realm. It’s just a big distraction from some of the bigger purposes of education and what we should be focusing on.”
Craven-Neeley, the Glassbrook teacher, said he had experienced the pull of the nation’s culture wars from both sides of the political spectrum. As a veteran teacher in Modesto, he sued the school district after it prevented him from talking about his husband, or talking about LGBTQ history, including gay rights icon Harvey Milk. He said he settled out of court.
Woke Kindergarten “had a lot of good things. I think race should be addressed. Children should be aware if they are being discriminated against,” he said. “But as a teacher of Hayward Unified, I shouldn’t have to get on the bandwagon of defunding police or insulting our country.”
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Woke Kindergarten’s contract in East Bay school terminated after national backlash
The anti-racist consulting firm Woke Kindergarten will no longer train teachers at an East Bay elementary school, the three-year, $250,000 contract terminated Monday after a national backlash over the provocative content as well as the questionable use of federal funding.
Hayward Unified officials said “the controversy was becoming a distraction,” with threatening and racist phone calls and emails to Glassbrook Elementary and the district office. District officials emphasized that while terminating the contract, they were “not repudiating any of the training related to the organization.”
Officials also placed on leave a teacher who criticized the program, without explaining their reasoning other than to cite “allegations of unprofessional conduct.” And a school board member is facing a formal investigation as well as public outrage over offensive comments he made to a staff member related to the district’s contract with Woke Kindergarten.
The furor came after the Chronicle published a story earlier this month about the school’s contract with the for-profit Woke Kindergarten, which trains teachers to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression, and remove those barriers to learning.
Officials also cited concerns over publicly posted videos from the Woke Kindergarten founder, Akiea “Ki” Gross, which included anti-Israel and anti-United States messages.
“Although we respect freedom of speech and the right for individuals to hold a variety of political views, the social media and other public statements of the vendor do not align with the values of the district and those of many of our community members,” said district spokesman Michael Bazeley.
Efforts to reach Gross, who identifies as they/them, were not successful.
District officials defended the program, which was paid for through a federal grant meant to help the country’s lowest-performing schools, saying it improved student outcomes as intended.
Yet Glassbrook’s test scores plummeted to new lows last spring — two years into the Woke Kindergarten training, with fewer than 8% of students proficient in English and just under 4% proficient in math. Two-thirds of the students are English learners and more than 80% are Hispanic/Latino.
Superintendent Jason Reimann also cited improved attendance among the school’s 474 students, but a similar improvement in attendance was seen districtwide.
District officials continued to support the training teachers had received despite terminating the contract, while also saying Gross’s controversial social media posts were a consideration.
In a recent post, Gross posted that they are “100%, ten toes down anti-Israel.”
“I believe Israel has no right to exist. I believe the United States has no rights to exist,” Gross said in the video posted on Instagram, a previously public account that is now private. “I believe every settler colony that has committed genocide against native peoples, against Indigenous people has no right to exist.
“Is this news to anybody?” they continued. “Y’all are the demons. Y’all are the villains. We’ve been trying to end y’all. Get free of y’all.”
It was unclear whether Gross was referring to the Chronicle’s stories about the program.
The curriculum also included words of the day, including protest and cease-fire, with Gross describing them as the “language of the resistance … to introduce children to liberatory vocabulary in a way that they can easily digest, understand and most importantly, use in their critiques of the system.”
It was unclear Tuesday how much of the $250,000 the for-profit company had been paid for its services, although Bazeley said the work was “substantially complete.”
The decision to bring in Woke Kindergarten, rather than a more traditional literacy or math improvement program, aligns with the belief by some parents and educators that the current education system isn’t working for many disadvantaged children.
The solution, these advocates say, is for educators to confront legacies of racism and bias in schools, and to talk about historic white supremacy, so that students feel safe and supported.
Glassbrook teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley said that while he supports discussing racism in the classroom, he was told the primary objective of the program was to “disrupt whiteness” in the school — and that the sessions were “not a place to express white guilt.” He said he questioned a trainer who used the phrasing “so-called United States,” as well as lessons available on the organization’s web site offering “Lil’ Comrade Convos,” or positing a world without police, money or landlords.
Following a divisive staff meeting, he was placed on paid administrative leave Thursday. As of Tuesday, he still had no information on specifics and remained on leave. District officials stood by the organization’s curriculum.
“The personal political and social views are separate from the work Woke Kindergarten did with us,” Bazeley said. “Anti-bias/anti-racist teaching, restorative practices, multilanguage learning, literacy and mathematics will remain a focus for Glassbrook, building on the work that school has undertaken over the past several years.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea...en-bay-area-schools-crt-contract-18665081.php (Archive)
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