The Revolution Will Be Graded: How Radical Activists Infiltrate K–12 Education

Another day, another far-Left street protest.

It gets hard to keep up with the current “thing” as activists switch out causes like the average person changes underwear. Last month’s pro-Palestine protest is yesterday’s anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protest is today’s pro-Iran protest.

But the issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution.

Even more concerning is how K-12 schools have been infiltrated by organizations to serve as fertile recruiting and training grounds for the next generation of far-Left activists.

Leveraging (liberated) ethnic studies courses as an access point, these outside groups hide behind “history” and “culture” to advance their radical ideology and recruit students and staff into their ranks.

School districts, in order to comply with California’s Assembly Bill 101 (2021) which mandates that students in the class of 2029-30 complete one semester of ethnic studies, have been hiring far-Left organizations to assist in developing and implementing these course curriculums, as well as running professional development trainings and conferences for teachers.

For example, an early July ethnic studies conference in Arizona features a “Pre-Institute Field Day on the Border” which includes “visiting a desert surveillance tower with local organizers.” The participants will “examine how the same technologies are used against Palestinians.”

On May 13, 2025, Stockton Unified School District’s board approved spending $28,000 to send ten ethnic studies educators to attend the institute.

One of the institute’s sessions, titled “Education as a Front, A Weapon & A Tool,” includes panelists such as the chair of the Association of Raza Educators (ARE) and co-founder of Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMC), and the director of Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC).

According to the description on Instagram, the “panel of educators and organizers will share tactics on how we can join forces by highlighting their work in the streets and in the schools, and help us identify critical fronts for cross movement solidarity.”

Both ARE and AROC openly engage in far-Left street activism. ARE’s Instagram is filled with protest propaganda, including a February 23, 2023, post which shows members of ARE following ICE agents to their “home base.”

Additionally, AROC helped organize the blockade of the Bay Bridge in 2023, and boasts about shutting down the Port of Oakland in 2024 in support of Palestine.

In 2023, San Francisco Unified School District approved a four year agreement with AROC to provide “workshops in classrooms related to leadership development and cultural empowerment.” AROC is a fiscal project of the Tides Foundation.

Not only are teachers being trained to advance far-Left activism, but the ideology has been embedded in ethnic studies curriculums, including how students are graded.

On June 18, 2025, Carlsbad Unified School District’s board approved a year-long elective ethnic studies course which includes units on studying and engaging in activism. Grading rubrics included in the draft document reveal that students are assessed on how well they advocate for “justice in speech and perspective” and recognize “equity as essential.”

In other words, students are taught to identify oppression and injustice (critical consciousness) and to act on it (praxis).

Critical consciousness, a primary concept in ethnic studies, teaches students to view everything using an oppressor — oppressed binary lens. The goal is to get the youth to constantly seek out new social justice causes to which they can attach themselves.

For example, a 2023 Pajaro Valley Unified School District board presentation reveals how the district integrated into its “Ethnic Literature and Studies “ course an “Ethnic Studies Praxis Story Plot” that replaces a traditional plot diagram with one steeped in critical consciousness. Students are taught to read stories in a circular fashion, moving from exposing the problem and recognizing the oppressed and oppressor classes, to “resistance and revolution” and how to apply the lessons to their own social justice activism.

Instead of seeking out meaningful resolutions and solutions, these courses, such as in Carlsbad and Parajo Valley schools, create perpetual social justice activists who bounce from one cause to the next in an effort to tear down the “oppressive” system and foment “revolution.”

While far-Left ethnic studies consultants make millions in consulting fees to advance their anti-Western Civilization ideology in schools, they are simultaneously turning K-12 students into the next generation of campus and street revolutionaries.

As liberated ethnic studies expands its tentacles across the country, parents, board members, administrators, teachers, and policymakers must grapple with this destructive ideology masquerading as “culture” and “history.”

The metastasis of these far-Left recruiting and training programs in our K-12 schools must be stopped.

American families deserve schools that teach children to read, write, and do math at the highest of standards — not indoctrination into social justice activism.

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Rhyen Staley is the Research Director for Defending Education. He holds a master’s degree in elementary education and has over a decade of classroom experience in both public and private schools. He has over 25 years of volleyball coaching experience from Women’s Division I down to junior high.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.