Steve Hilton, the Republican nominee for California governor, says the state's public schools should go back to English-only classrooms, arguing that time spent accommodating other languages is time schools can't afford to lose. In a separate video posted on social media, he took aim at the California Coastal Commission, calling its members idiots over long-running fights about beach access and off-roading.
Hilton made the comments in a Fox News interview, as reported by The National News Desk. He said English-only instruction should be the standard in California, framing it bluntly: people in the United States speak English. Pointing to standardized test results, he said less than half of the state's children meet basic English standards, and argued that classroom time should not be diverted to serve students who need instruction in other languages — those needs, he said, can be addressed outside the classroom instead.
According to the same interview, Hilton said English and math are the basic subjects schools need to teach, and that both should be taught in English. He noted that California once required English-language instruction statewide before voters overturned that requirement, and said the state should return to its former policy.
What California's Language Instruction Laws Actually Say
Hilton's framing skips over some history. California voters did approve English-only instruction once, under Proposition 227 in June 1998, which passed with 60.9% of the vote and established structured English immersion in place of most bilingual programs statewide, according to Ballotpedia. Under that law, non-native English speakers were generally required to transition out of sheltered instruction within a year.
Voters reversed course in November 2016, repealing Prop 227 by passing Proposition 58 with 73.5% approval, a landslide that restored local school districts' authority to run dual-language and bilingual programs, per the Institute of Governmental Studies. Prop 58 also did away with the annual waiver paperwork parents previously needed to request non-English instruction.
The debate centers on English learners in California's public schools.
State Strategy Points In A Different Direction
Hilton pointed to standardized test results in making his case.
Yet the state's own policy is moving in the opposite direction from what Hilton proposes. Under its Global California 2030 initiative launched in 2018, the California Department of Education set goals to enroll half of all K–12 students in dual-language immersion programs and to expand bilingual school offerings from 400 to 1,600 by 2030. As Hoodline has reported, that expansion has run into a teacher shortage: nearly 1,400 California teachers were trained in bilingual education in the 2023–24 school year, a legacy of the 18-year Prop 227 era that collapsed university bilingual-teacher training pipelines, per CalMatters.
Coastal Commission Fight Echoes A Court Loss
Hilton didn't stop at schools. He also criticized the California Coastal Commission's handling of beach access and off-roading, calling its members idiots and saying commission bureaucrats had spent years trying to shut down those activities. He said he was finished with the commission's efforts on the matter in a video posted on social media, according to The National News Desk.
His frustration lines up with a real regulatory fight. The Coastal Commission voted 10–0 in March 2021 to phase out off-highway vehicle access at the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area by 2024, citing habitat degradation and air pollution, as Courthouse News reported at the time. Oceano Dunes allowed recreational off-road driving along the coastline. But the commission's ban didn't survive legal scrutiny: in March 2025, a panel on the California Second District Court of Appeal ruled the commission had exceeded its jurisdiction, holding that local coastal planning policies in San Luis Obispo County govern vehicle access there, not the state agency.
Hilton's Comments Land Amid The Governor's Race
Hilton launched his campaign in April 2025 at Pier Plaza in Huntington Beach, a location that has repeatedly served as a flashpoint against state mandates, according to SFGate. His campaign has advertised reducing rules and addressing state-government bloat.
The California governor's race includes Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra and Republican candidate Steve Hilton.
