Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton has harsh criticisms, sweeping fixes for California schools

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton views California’s low third grade reading and math scores as a crisis and an indictment of the state’s “catastrophically failing system.”

He places much of the blame for low scores on children’s excessive access to smartphones (a “scourge that’s destroying childhood,” he said), on teachers’ unions (“easily the most destructive institution in California”) and on legislators’ and governors’ inaction.

“The richest state in the richest country on earth can’t teach more than half its kids to read,” Hilton said in an interview with EdSource journalists. “The people who defend it should be ashamed of themselves. And the people who’ve sustained it and kept it going and made excuses for it and funded it through their legislation or whatever should be ashamed of themselves as far as I’m concerned.”

Hilton, 57, is a British-born son of Hungarian immigrants who was a strategist for two years for former Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Since moving to California, he has founded a high-tech startup and for six years contributed to a weekly show, The Next Revolution, on the Fox News Channel. He will face former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, in the Nov. 3 election.

Hilton discussed his education policy positions and plans in a wide-ranging 50-minute interview. He said he favors school choice through education savings accounts, a form of vouchers that has been expanded in states such as Arizona and Texas. He would ban smartphone use for children under 14 and establish a moratorium on AI use in schools until summer 2027 to better understand its potential benefits and harms.

Hilton has no shortage of ideas for reforming education. His primary goal would be to focus on teaching children literacy and math and rid them of anything he perceives as preventing that goal, including ending tenure for teachers. He also would halt funding for community schools, which Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced. And he opposes funding for ethnic studies.

But Hilton would support other Newsom administration initiatives funding universal free school meals and after-school programs.

Acknowledging that a Democrat-dominated Legislature would likely stand in his way, he said he would turn to voter initiatives for some proposals, like ending teacher tenure, and enact others through a receptive State Board of Education he would appoint.

Here’s how a Hilton governorship would impact California education.

An imperative for strong measures

Philosophically, he told EdSource, he opposed top-down measures, but “they’re imperative right now” because of student literacy and math scores.

“I feel as if we cannot just muddle through and make marginal incremental improvement here,” he said.

His solutions to poor performance, cited on his website, include grading schools based on student performance, starting in third grade, and removing principals of low-performing schools. Parents of low-scoring schools would have the ability to enroll their children in any other school. And teachers would be graded, too, based on students’ test scores (Fact check: Current California law bans using test scores to evaluate teachers.)

Hilton also would resurrect the “parent trigger law,” which would empower parents of low-performing schools with consecutive years of bad scores to petition for restructuring, whether firing the principal or becoming a charter school.

Early literacy

The Legislature and Newsom pieced together an early literacy plan that, while not mandating phonics, requires new teachers to be trained in evidence-based reading instruction.

Hilton said “nudging” doesn’t go far enough. “It’s ridiculous that we’re still having this conversation, and it’s not 100% operational in every school. I mean, this debate was settled decades ago on the basis of evidence throughout the world,” he said.

Appointing an education commissioner

The next governor will appoint the state’s first education commissioner, who will replace the state superintendent of public instruction, under a reorganization plan that Newsom included in the state budget.

Hilton pointed to Carey M. Wright, who led the early literacy initiative in Mississippi, since lauded as the “Mississippi Miracle” that led to a meteoric rise in test scores in reading and math “for a fraction of the spending that we do here in California,” he said.

Wright has taken the job of Maryland state superintendent, he said, “so that’s the kind of person” he would be looking for.

Ethnic studies

In 2021, Newsom signed a law mandating that every high school offer ethnic studies, subject to funding, and Newsom has since failed to include it in the state budget. Hilton said he wouldn’t either. “Half the kids can’t read, two-thirds can’t do math,” he said. “It’s ridiculous to me that this is being prioritized in this way.”

Hilton cited the first draft of the state’s ethnic studies framework, which Newsom rejected as antisemitic. “We shouldn’t be having any of this stuff,” he said. “I think it’s just a real distraction.”

Student mental health

Many school districts have responded to students’ post-pandemic mental health challenges by hiring more counselors and therapists. Asked whether districts should spend more or less on mental health, Hilton said, “I think there tends to be a wrong assumption that spending money on something will mean you get good results.”

“I think that the increase in mental health problems among young kids is directly connected to what we were talking about earlier, with smartphones,” he said. “Look at schools that have banned smartphones bell to bell, and they report really rapid improvements in mental health in the school — fewer reported incidents of bullying, anxiety; kids are speaking to each other, they’re interacting on a human level.”

“I’m certainly not against providing necessary support, counseling, whatever, but I’d love to see what we can do to actually minimize the problems,” he said.

Criticism of teachers unions

Hilton was unsparing in his criticism of the state’s teachers unions, especially “the absolutely crazy way in which teachers get tenure after, what is it, 16 months?” (Fact check: Tenure in California, ensuring teachers have due-process rights over assignments, layoffs and discipline, is granted after two years, although districts must complete evaluations months earlier.)

“I mean, tenure was invented as a technique to protect academic freedom in the university, not to protect bad teachers who get taxpayer money for failing to educate children, or worse,” he said.

“It’s the most vulnerable, the poorest kids, and the racial groups that have traditionally been underserved by the school system, who are being victimized the most by the teacher unions,” he said, without mentioning by name the California Teachers Association, the predominant teachers union.

However, he equated teachers unions’ campaign contributions to “totally corrupt means by bribing the politicians who make these rules,” he asserted, without citing examples. “I mean, that’s obviously what’s going on. Everyone knows that.”

AI and screen time

Hilton said he would call for “an immediate pause on AI in schools” so that there could be a “thoughtful evaluation” instead of continuing a piecemeal rollout while tech companies “get their lobbying teeth” into school districts.

While “definitely not against AI,” he pointed to “very serious concerns” over “cognitive stunting, where you’re using AI way too early, and at the time when students are supposed to be developing their capacity to think and process and make arguments.”

He’s unwavering about banning smartphones during the school day for students under 14, for which he said he’s been advocating since 2015, when he proposed 16 as the cutoff date.

Screens, he said, “are a complete menace.” He said the grassroots efforts ofWait Until 8th parent groups have impressed him. They are encouraging parents to pledge not to provide a smartphone to their children until the end of eighth grade.

A go-between with President Trump

Hilton was endorsed by President Trump in the June primary election, which will hardly help him in November, when he’ll need Democratic votes. But Hilton calls himself a pragmatist, “not an ideologue.”

“I will stand up against, argue the case with the federal government when it comes to things that, in my judgment, are important for California,” he said. He cited his opposition to the Trump administration’s threat to withhold research funding for the University of California.

The state and Trump have been in conflict over the protection of the privacy of transgender students versus the administration’s insistence that parents be notified of changes in a child’s gender identity.

“I don’t like these hard and fast rules on this,” he said. “I don’t like hiding things from parents. I think that’s wrong. But there’s going to be a very small number of cases where you want to protect children’s safety. We need to make sure that’s available.”