On June 10, 2026, roughly 150 determined souls, including myself and our two SFUSD teens, lined the halls for the congressional hearing “Breaking Trust: Attacks on Parental Rights, Inappropriate Content, and Legal Abuses in America’s Schools.” Only about 50 hopefuls secured seats in the committee room. Limited capacity, and an organizers’ note that overflow rooms had long gone underused, made one thing clear: this was no niche grievance. The crisis in education had struck a national nerve, its reckoning long overdue.
This gathering unfolded against a backdrop of growing academic alarm. More than 1,400 University of California professors, and the number continues to climb, have signed an open letter urging the return of the SAT for admissions, citing the severe math deficits that followed test-blind policies. This is the same ideological wave that swept away algebra and talented-and-gifted programs after merit itself was branded racist amid the nation’s cultural tempests.
“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” became the banner under which high-achieving students were too often sidelined. Across the country, the deeper assault on education’s core left American children at the back of the line in the very schools meant to launch them. After the discovery that UCLA Medical School used race-based admissions illegally for incoming students, the Department of Justice has expanded its investigation into 15 other medical schools, including Yale, Stanford, U.C. San Diego, and Ohio State University.
Was the hearing political? In moments, unmistakably so. Representative Ilhan Omar peacocked in nearly two hours late, commandeered her brief spotlight to skewer a political rival with theatrical flair, then swept out as abruptly as she had arrived. Others, including California’s Representative Mark DeSaulnier, held the party line and insisted all was well in SFUSD, seemingly untouched by the more than 300 pages of documentation the Friends of Lowell Foundation had delivered to his office, chronicling alleged Brown Act violations, transparency failures, and financial missteps involving PEEF funds and bonds.
Even Representative Kevin Kiley lobbed soft-ball inquiries at Superintendent Maria Su, perhaps mindful of the Democratic base he must court to keep his redistricted seat. Whispers also circulated of last-minute appeals from San Francisco City Hall moderates urging the committee not to further embarrass a city still reeling from progressive policy failures. Yet the true casualties were the students.
My Lowell teens had journeyed across the country, arriving an hour early only to be relegated into the cafeteria, where they followed the proceedings on their phones for lack of any proper overflow. After three hours of testimony, scarcely a word addressed the unique burdens on SFUSD youth, created by adult choices that quietly stripped them of self-agency and genuine choice.
Lowell’s own student newspaper captured the frustration with quiet precision. Freshman Mia Issa opted out of ethnic studies to take Japanese 3 and Orchestra, choosing language and music over mandated content. The paper posed the core question: Is ethnic studies truly essential to a student’s learning and growth, or does it eclipse other vital paths? Teens crave authentic options, not two semesters of auto-enrolled ethnic studies that crowd out electives, drain enthusiasm, and tilt the curriculum toward activism. SFUSD has even required simultaneous math classes just to reach eighth-grade algebra, sacrificing the arts and languages that ignite young minds. Parents already struggle to convince children why education deserves their weekends and early mornings; we need not add required lessons on “Adultism” that cast teachers as oppressors.
The choice to grapple with Marx and Engels, or to embrace activism, should belong to the young, not be compulsory material served by adults with dreams deferred. From a bird’s eye view, America’s public education is being hollowed from within. Thousands of U.C. professors plead for standardized testing to pierce grade inflation and restore merit. Homeschooling has surged to roughly 3.4 million children nationwide, more than double prepandemic levels, as families seek refuge. College costs have soared, filling the likes of Harvard and U.C. Berkeley classrooms with record numbers of full-tuition international students. The American Dream is receding for too many domestic students. At Lowell, where about 43 percent of students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, pathways to top U.C.s have narrowed sharply. Despite 94% of Mission graduates failing state math proficiency, Mission had a 45% U.C. Berkeley acceptance rate, compared to just 12% for Lowell (42 of 363 applicants accepted, 321 rejected). Lowell, a merit-based admission public high school was historically one of Berkeley’s top feeder schools with 35–50% acceptance rates. I look into the faces of my teens’ friends, bright, ambitious, hopeful, and see the unintended lesson: You can work relentlessly, post top scores and grades for years; yet the color of your skin may still outweigh every ounce of grit and earned excellence.
Decades ago, at my son’s age, I stood in the halls of our Capital, taking first in the nation in constitutional debate. That victory came from a public after-school program taught by two private attorneys and an assistant district attorney that volunteered their time. They taught me how to think, not what to think. That is the inheritance I want for every child: the pure love of learning, the freedom to shape their contribution, and the chance to help build a more united republic. Restore agency, quality choices, and merit to students, and the passion for education and learning will return.
Does Superintendent Maria Su truly possess the fortitude to speak for our kids? To parents she promises a service model centered on families and communities. Before the teachers’ union, she yields to auto-enrollment in the unvetted “Voices” ethnic studies curriculum. Called by City Hall, she shelves her own “grading for equity” experiment, more clinical psychology than sound pedagogy. This pattern of conflicting signals now draws scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, alongside documented concerns from the Friends of Lowell Foundation over parental notification, transparency, and fiscal stewardship.
The committee chair’s closing remarks cut to the heart: schools exist first to educate. As Chairman Walberg put it, the status quo “isn’t producing the quality we need in education to stay ahead of the world and to be that beacon in the world we need to be.”
Culture wars carry real consequences. Their resolution often falls to the courts and measured legislation, as with Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Federal investigations continue to reveal how ideology has eclipsed education in institutions from U.C.s to Ivies. Incoming students arrive needing remediation in middle-school math and basic literacy.
In the end, our youth are the ones shafted, denied a robust education, and the sovereignty of real choice. This conversation must begin, and remain, with them.
