California families want schools that focus on teaching kids to read, write and think critically.

Instead, the San Francisco Unified School District is hosting workshops like one that casts teachers as oppressors and classroom authority as “adult supremacy.”

This is not satire. In April, the nonprofit Teachers 4 Social Justice held a training at John O’Connell High School that argued the teacher-student relationship is inherently oppressive because of “systemic power dynamics.”

Academic benchmarks were dismissed as Eurocentric and dehumanizing.

Parents have every right to be angry.

More than half of California students still cannot read at grade level. Yet school districts are platforming ideological fads that treat adults as the problem and basic expectations as oppression.

This is not harmless sensitivity training. It is educational malpractice.

When schools allow students to be taught that authority, discipline and high standards are forms of supremacy, they send a dangerous message: Achievement matters less than politics.

The consequences are already showing up on college campuses.

Hundreds of University of California faculty members, including seven of the system’s nine math department chairs, recently signed an open letter calling for the return of standardized math testing for STEM admissions. Their reason was simple. After the UC system dropped the SAT and ACT, incoming students’ math skills fell off a cliff.

One campus reported a nearly 30-fold increase in students needing middle-school-level math remediation. Professors are now spending valuable class time teaching basic arithmetic in courses meant for future engineers, scientists and mathematicians.

This is what happens when K–12 education loses sight of its mission.

The current playbook? Undermine teachers. Lower standards. Water down academic benchmarks. Then act surprised when students arrive at college unprepared.

Strong schools are built on a simple formula: good teachers, high standards, learning first.

Teachers are not oppressors. They are the people who help children unlock their potential.

For generations, hardworking teachers have been the bridge between childhood and opportunity. They taught students to read, write, calculate and think. They opened doors to college, careers and a better future.

That’s what schools are supposed to do.

Instead, unions and activist administrators treat classrooms like laboratories to test radical social theories rather than places where children learn essential skills. Students are paying the price.

This is a warning for California and for the rest of the country.

When ideology replaces fundamentals, reading and math scores fall. Students graduate with fewer skills. Colleges lower expectations. Employers struggle to find qualified workers.

California families are not asking for power-dynamic seminars or political theories. They are asking for schools that stay focused on teaching reading, writing, math and the skills needed to succeed in life.

It is time to stop obsessing over who is supposedly oppressing whom and get back to the basics of education.

Our kids deserve better.

Sonja Shaw is the president of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education and a candidate for California state superintendent of public instruction.

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