Berkeley shows why parents must see every lesson

Berkeley teachers told their colleagues they were “not at liberty to share” an Israel/Palestine lesson set directly with families, and no school has the right to teach a lesson it will not show the parents^{1, 2}.

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, released that finding on Oct. 21, 2026, in a report on the committee's investigations into the School District of Philadelphia, Berkeley Unified School District and the National Education Association¹. The Daily Californian reports that the committee released more than 1,000 pages of Berkeley files, including instructional materials and staff emails about Palestine and curricula³. The committee put the stake in one line on X: “Parents deserve to know what their children are being taught.”⁴ Parents are their children's first teachers, so what does a district call a lesson it cannot hand to a child's own mother and father?

The lesson framed Israel through contested claims

The committee found that the lessons behind that secrecy downplayed terrorism. It also reports that an ethnic studies unit features a map labeling Israel as “Palestine” and praises figures with histories of antisemitic remarks¹.

The report says Berkeley Unified repeatedly worked with the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, a partnership it says resulted “in lessons littered with antisemitic resources along with the activist ideology that fuels contemporary antisemitism.”³ The district paid for that help: in August 2023 it agreed to pay the consortium $111,120 for curriculum writing, consulting and professional-development sessions. It approved $9,840 more for consulting in August 2024².

Parents and taxpayers funded outside writers to build lessons on one of the most contested conflicts in the world, and the families of the children taught from them were told the material was not theirs to see.

Berkeley’s curriculum reached fourth-graders

The committee report says Berkeley worked with the consortium on ethnic studies units and lessons for third, fourth, fifth, seventh and eighth grades, plus ninth-grade units². The fourth-grade unit introduces the terms “colonization,” “decolonization” and “settler,” The Daily Californian reports³.

Tali Klima of the Bay Area Jewish Coalition told JNS the district's staff “explicitly promote student activism as young as elementary school.”⁵ If a unit reaches third grade, parents must be able to read it before the first lesson.

A defense of teaching cannot justify secrecy

Berkeley Independent Study math and data science teacher Corey Wade defended the lessons to The Daily Californian. His defense gives no reason to keep the lessons from the families of the children in the room.

Wade also said the committee's release “forces teachers to kind of recalibrate and think about it.”³ If daylight makes teachers recalibrate, that is the argument for daylight.

Parents need enforceable access to every lesson

Parents have a natural right, and a responsibility, to direct the education of their children, and a right that depends on a district's goodwill is no right at all. Philadelphia shows what pressure produces: after years of complaints, the district told the committee that teachers and administrators would no longer write its social studies curricula¹. Berkeley's families have no such commitment.

Sarah Levin of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa called for “an independent investigation into these reported partnerships, full transparency about the development of these curricula and immediate corrective action wherever violations are substantiated.”⁵ Parents should add a demand she did not make: a right they can enforce in their own school board's policy.

Berkeley's board and every school board in America should post every lesson, reading, map and instructional resource and give families a way to compel release when a school refuses. Will Berkeley's board publish its Israel/Palestine lesson set for families, yes or no? Will it adopt a policy giving parents access to every lesson in every grade, yes or no?

Sources

1. @EdWorkforceCmte Investigation Exposes Antisemitism, Political Indoctrination in K-12 Schools | Committee on Education & the Workforce
2. ANTISEMITISM
3. US House committee report finds antisemitism, political activism in Berkeley school district | Local Schools | dailycal.org
4. @EdWorkforceCmte on X, 2026-10-23: From FOURTH GRADE to HIGH SCHOOL, Berkeley students are being introduced to radical ideology in the classroom. From “covert resistance” to lessons defending antisemitic remarks as “good trouble,” Committee Republicans' investigation exposed what's in BUSD, 2026-10-23
5. House ed panel report on Jew-hatred in Berkeley schools reflects ‘many years’ of community concern, Bay Area Jewish groups say - Israel & Jewish News - JNS