Woke Education Is Going Strong, Even in Middle America

I identify both as an educator and a serious journalist.

Woke Education Is Going Strong, Even in Middle America

Schools in Wauwatosa, Wis., embrace far-left fads from ‘gender identity’ to ‘restorative justice.’

By Daniel Buck

May 23, 2025 5:32 pm ET

One question persists in American education: How pervasive are the stories of kindergartners learning about transgenderism or high-schoolers waving Hamas flags in hallways? Among the four million teachers in the U.S. there will inevitably be cranks and ideologues who mistake their lectern for a pulpit. Examination of a typical American school district in a typical American town reveals that the progressive mismanagement of school districts extends beyond the dark-blue borders of San Francisco and Portland, Ore.

Recent Census data demonstrate that Wauwatosa, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, is about as average as it gets. It’s politically split, helping to elect Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2014 and President Joe Biden six years later. It’s economically middle-class with the median home value sitting at roughly $300,000, just under the $400,000 median value across the country. In other words, Wauwatosa is that fabled “real America.” What happens in San Francisco may be an outlier, but what happens in Wauwatosa likely happens in countless other districts.

So what happens in Wauwatosa?

In 2022 the Wauwatosa school board approved a new sex-education curriculum. Among other things, it expects sixth-graders to define different types of sexual intercourse. Kindergartners learn about genitalia with the help of cartoon drawings and third-graders are informed that, no matter their body parts, they may feel like another “gender.” Notably, the newly adopted units are based on the National Sex Education Standards, which encourage teaching third-graders about puberty blockers, sixth-graders about abortion and students as young as kindergarten about “gender identity.”

The red flags appear in more than the curriculum. Wauwatosa is one of thousands of districts to have adopted a “restorative justice” policy. This is an alternative to traditional discipline structures that emphasizes dialogue over punishment and focuses on revising school policy rather than changing student behavior. In February 2025, the Wauwatosa school superintendent retained a consultant to investigate the “professional culture” at McKinley Elementary School. The final report, dated May 9, reveals that disruptive students received treats “in the form of food and beverages” and a chance to play games in the office instead of a standard detention.

To no one’s surprise, Wauwatosa schools have developed a reputation for permissive discipline and frequent fights. The chaos that results from leniency has led to more expulsion notices than is typical.

Advanced education is also at risk in Wauwatosa. The board voted last month to close a high-performing STEM school in the district, which regularly ranks as one of the top elementary schools in the state. This prompted a civil-rights complaint from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, alleging that the decision was driven by a desire to achieve racial balancing in the district—at the expense of student outcomes. Meanwhile, a separate consulting group’s report recommends the district eliminate advanced math tracks for middle-schoolers and early-entry algebra for gifted students, and consolidate high school algebra and geometry into “integrated math” courses. Offering gifted sixth-graders the chance to do accelerated coursework is, the consultants say, “highly problematic.”

Wauwatosa isn’t alone. My research with Jay Richards shows that at least 37% of American students learn about gender ideology at school. Twenty-one states have enacted restorative-justice approaches to discipline. And cities across the country—from San Francisco and Boston to New York and Chicago—are axing their advanced curricular offerings.

If Wauwatosa is a representative district—and all the evidence suggests it is—then no-consequence discipline, de-tracked math, gender theory for elementary schoolers and other such policies have become the norm. In many ways, this soft progressivism is even more corrosive than its overt counterparts. Drag-queen story hours (Wauwatosa tried that too) and racial affinity groups make easy targets for antiwoke crusaders. But a poor discipline policy or literature unit that encourages students to read Shakespeare through a gender-studies lens is harder to identify and remove.

These aren’t tumors that can be easily excised. They are degenerative disorders that leave schools hunched and limping toward failure.

Mr. Buck is a senior visiting fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.