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California School’s Math and Literacy Rates Plummet Lower After Purchasing ‘Woke Kindergarten’ Curriculum

February 07, 2024

A California elementary school is under fire for dismal math and literacy rates that plummeted even further after purchasing a curriculum two years ago that was branded specifically as “woke” by its creator. The Bay Area school paid an excessive amount for a curriculum called “Woke Kindergarten” founded by Akiea Gross.

Ms. Gross identifies as nonbinary and unapologetically spews anti-Israel, racist, and gender ideology on all her social media sites and within her curriculum’s website and products. Instead of showing any actual progress results, the elementary school has gotten worse.

Color me not surprised

Glassbrook Elementary in California paid $250 thousand for the Woke Kindergarten curriculum. Two years into their three-year contract with Ms. Gross, the students of Glassbrook Elementary are in worse shape than ever.

Only 4% of Glassbrook students are proficient in math, and only 12% are proficient in English. These statistics have earned Glassbrook a place on California’s lowest-performance level on their Comprehensive School Improvement list.

Spending a quarter of a million dollars on this Woke Kindergarten curriculum didn’t help the students read or answer math problems any better. So, what was the goal of this curriculum?

One of the primary objectives of Woke Kindergarten is to “disrupt whiteness.” The curriculum includes various exercises to include “I wonder” thought projects, such as the following:

“I wonder…if the United States defunded the Israeli military, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?”

As a foreign policy and federal spending nerd, I’m all about teaching both concepts in school. However, it’s hard to believe elementary students can adequately analyze and dissect this leading question when they can’t, you know, read.

Another “I wonder” exercise is:

“I wonder…If we abolished the police, what else could we do to keep people in the world safe?”

I can think of a few things, such as making sure children know how to read and write and practice basic arithmetic so they can have a better chance at higher education and value-added employment. But what do I know…I’m just some white person.

Vocabulary work

Another interesting teaching tool of Woke Kindergarten is what Ms. Gross calls “Woke Word of the Day.” These words are meant to educate children with the “language of the resistance,” as dubbed on the program’s website.

The goal is 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.”

An example of these woke words of the day include:

  • ceasefire

  • strike

  • abolish

  • protest

  • anti-racist

Before you brush this lunacy off as something only found in the depths of depravity known as California, think again. In 2021, Akiea Gross found her way into the Virginia school system.

Fairfax Community Public School District recommended her audiobook Safe for 2nd Graders. In the audiobook, Ms. Gross states:

“I feel safe when there are no police.”

At least Ms. Gross doesn’t bother to hide her agenda; she puts out who she is and what she aims to achieve in full view.

A lovely person

The curriculum created by Akiea Gross is appalling in and of itself, and the amount of money she raked in from her left-wing extremist ideology is also staggering. But the grossest (pun intended) thing produced by Akiea Gross is her thoughts on current events.

In a recent video, Ms. Gross said of the terrorist strike by Hamas on October 7th:

“I believe Israel has no right to exist. I believe the United States has no right to exist. I believe every settler colony who has committed genocide against native peoples has no right to exist.”

Clearly, Ms. Gross isn’t well versed in history, much like the young children she claims to want to educate. You’d be hard-pressed to find a nation on this Earth that isn’t technically born from colonialism or some form of settlement.

Furthermore, it’s equally as challenging to find a civilization not at one point guilty of “genocide against native peoples” to include any number of African nations in existence today. Hell, the definition of what constitutes a “native people” gets a bit fuzzy when one considers that all ancient civilizations at one point were wanderers of the land, often displacing other wanderers.

Still, my personal favorite disgusting creation of Ms. Gross is her fresh take on the nursery rhyme The Wheels on the Bus utilized by teachers in New York. Her version titled The Wheels on the Tank has the following verses:

“The wheels on the tanks go round and round, all through the town. The people in the town they hold their ground, and never back down.”

And this lovely rendition:

“The bombs in the air go whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, all through the skies. From every river to every sea, the people cry, cry, cry. Free Palestine till the wheels on the tanks fall off.”

How creative, although you can’t dance to it. Parents of all demographics should be asking themselves why their public school administrators and school boards are spending their tax dollars on curriculum written by arguably actual extremists while labeling parents like myself who home school as dangerous and extreme.

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