Ethnic Studies: Evidence-Based Curriculum, or CRT Trojan Horse?

Ethnic Studies (ES) is proliferating in public schools in blue states. In 2017, Oregon was the first state to require the creation of Ethnic Studies curriculum for grades K-12. Washington state followed suit soon thereafter. Under the leadership of Miguel Cardona, Biden’s Secretary of Education, Connecticut became the first state to require that every high school offer Ethnic Studies as a high school elective course. Last year, California mandated an Ethnic Studies course as a graduation requirement.  

Proponents of Ethnic Studies argue that it’s an “evidence-based” best practice. Critics allege that it’s a Trojan Horse for racialized neo-Marxist ideology. Who has the better argument?

The best, indeed the only, source of rigorous evidence was a two part examination of the effects of taking an Ethnic Studies course for struggling students in San Francisco lead by Stanford’s Thomas Dee. Being assigned to an Ethnic Studies course increased GPA by 1.4 points, ninth-grade attendance by 21 percentage points, and graduation rate by 25 percent.

For those who don’t study education policy, those are absolutely huge effects. For some who study it very closely, those are allegedly fake effects. UCLA Law’s Richard Sander and UPenn’s Abraham Wyner recently published an article eviscerating Dee et al.’s work. They write that its methods were “so muddled, and the data reported is so ambiguous, that in fact they support no conclusion, either positive or negative.”

Sander-Wyner argued that to arrive at positive GPA effects, Dee et al. took an “odd” and “unjustifiable extrapolation” from the data to perform a calculation that was “bogus” and “nonsensical.” Regarding attendance, Sander-Wyner allege that Dee et al. turned “terrible results into fake ‘good’ results.”

Sander-Wyner took the unusual step of publicly challenging a peer-reviewed study in part to highlight the fact that it made it through that gatekeeping process. They speculate that perhaps the paper sailed through on the credit of the lead authors’ reputation, courtesy of its complicated technical jargon, and/or because professors have a weak spot for positive findings that align with their ideological priors.  

It's possible that Dee will forcefully rebuke Sander-Wyner to the full satisfaction of neutral academics. But even if he were to, two problems would remain for proponents of Ethnic Studies.

First, as Dee has pointed out, a study of a district-wide Ethnic Studies course simply doesn’t provide reliable evidence that it would work when implemented statewide.

Second, and more important, is the question: What exactly is Ethnic Studies?  

Dee’s characterized the pilot program he studied in the context of “culturally relevant pedagogy.” “CRP” is a concept pioneered by Gloria Ladson-Billings, the academic who introduced Critical Race Theory to K-12 education. In Critical Race Theory in Education: A Scholar’s Journey Ladson-Billings defines the core tenets of CRP as a “focus on student learning, development of cultural competence, and promotion of a sociopolitical consciousness.”

As parents have seen, CRT spreads through slippery language games. “Cultural competence” sounds like it should mean “getting along well with people from other backgrounds.” Maybe sometimes it does. But other times, it is defined as antonym for “color-blindness,” i.e., for treating people without regard to the color of their skin. Similarly, “sociopolitical consciousness” could mean “civic knowledge and spirit.” Or it could mean a very particular kind of politicized spirit.

In general, Ethnic Studies can take one of two forms: (1) Multicultural Ethnic Studies, which focuses on the positive historical contributions of minority groups; or (2) Liberated Ethnic Studies, which leverages race to push partisan political arguments about “identity,” “power,” and “social justice” rooted in Critical Race Theory ideology.

Which is it more frequently in practice?

Connecticut’s state standards feature a lesson unit about the Moors, which it framed as an “an excellent refutation of the false narrative of African racial inferiority.” But one assigned reading argues those who identify Moors as black are “Negro sellouts” that “appeal to the lazy, the weak [sic] those who are unsure about their identity and need large flamboyant claims of historical greatness over everyone to restore some much-needed self-pride.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the first bill requiring Ethnic Studies after a public outcry about the anti-Semitism inherent in the proposed curriculum guide. Parents successfully sued California to remove a chant to Aztec Gods from the curriculum. Traditionally, these gods were venerated through human sacrifice. But California repurposed this chant for political messaging: “Transformation, decolonization, liberation, education, emancipation, changin’ our situation in this human transformation.” In short, the California state guide leans hard left.

In theory, California school districts were supposed to be free ignore the state’s suggested curriculum and to design their own courses. But the University of California system is considering the unprecedented step of making it an admissions requirement for students to take an Ethnic Studies course infused with CRT ideology. There is, suffice to say, no evidence that teaching neo-Marxist doctrine as truth is beneficial for students.

This all should matter. It should matter whether policymakers have any rational evidentiary basis for a new curricular initiative. And it should matter whether the content of that curriculum highlights the contributions of minority groups or whether it is, in fact, a shoddily constructed Trojan Horse for neo-Marxist indoctrination.

But will it matter? Even before his study came under withering scrutiny, Dee noted that it did not provide evidence justifying statewide implementation. And up until the University of California system attempted its end-run to imprint its far-left ideological preference on public schools, there has been very little concern apparent about “Liberated” Ethnic Studies from anyone who isn’t on the political right. Maybe the new questions raised about the evidence and the University of California’s overreach can provide a teachable moment.

Or maybe no new lessons will be learned, and Ethnic Studies will continue to proliferate apace in blue states. And that would teach quite the lesson.

Max Eden is a Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.