Gov. Tim Walz’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) recently requested public comments on its proposed prek-12 Ethnic Studies license, which is written in such a way that politicizes the licensure pathway and further compromises the state’s education standards from political impartiality.
This “liberated” version of Ethnic Studies is rooted in narrow ideologies that emphasize an “us vs. them” binary — “oppression,” “decolonization,” “settler-colonialism,” “dispossession,” and “resistance” — and frames complicated history as a zero-sum power struggle.
It has found its way into Minnesota’s new K-12 social studies standards (scheduled for full implementation during the 2026-27 school year) and will be embedded into all other required academic standards — science, math, language arts, PE, arts — as they come up for review and revision on their 10-year cycle.
Additionally, public high schools will have to offer an Ethnic Studies course starting in the 2026-27 school year, and by the 2027-28 school year, schools must provide Ethnic Studies instruction in elementary and middle schools. (Reminder, though, that according to state statute, the high school Ethnic Studies course may focus specifically on a particular group of national or ethnic origin. For example, Minnesota’s Scandinavian roots, which are a big part of the state’s national identity.)
We know from examples of critical Ethnic Studies courses already being offered at the local level and because of the groups involved in writing Ethnic Studies lesson plans that Minnesota’s Ethnic Studies is not “just” about students learning about slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese-American internment camps, and redlining.
On the contrary, as we see from the way PELSB has written its proposed Ethnic Studies license subject matter standards, this Ethnic Studies is rooted in critical social justice concepts. It is not about academia, because the movement itself was borne out of political activism, resistance, and revolution.
As Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director with AMCHA Initiative, describes it, “Ethnic studies was the first discipline to enter the academy with an explicitly political rather than scholarly mission
that was rooted in a fusion of separatist nationalism with a Third World Internationalism that united nationalist groups in the service of anti-colonial struggle. Ethnic studies was never intended to study and teach about specific ethnic groups, rather, its goal was to contribute toward the liberation of these groups by revolutionizing both society and its educational institutions.
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…[U]nlike other disciplines in the academy, which seek to provide students with the analytical tools to objectively evaluate knowledge and arrive at their own conclusions, “critical” ethnic studies starts with a set of foregone conclusions and ideological commitments that are imposed on students and must be adopted by them without question or debate. These include the acceptance of revolutionary political ideologies and their moral valuations and prescribed activism.
PELSB is expected to release its notice to adopt the Ethnic Studies licensure rules this summer. Stay tuned for next ways the public can weigh in.
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Read below for American Experiment’s comments to PELSB’s Rulemaking Specialist, Steven Rollin.
Dear Mr. Rollin,
My name is Catrin Wigfall, and I am a policy fellow at Center of the American Experiment and a formerly licensed K-12 public school teacher. I am writing today to respectfully request the board to remove 8710.4810 from its proposed rule drafts as a licensure pathway.
While Minnesota high schools must offer an Ethnic Studies course starting in the 2026-27 school year (Min. Stat. 120B.251), the proposed Ethnic Studies licensure field is an unnecessary special license requirement for this subject matter, as it is redundant to the state’s social studies licensure pathway.
Additionally, because state law gives local school districts flexible parameters regarding a wide range of subject matter that their Ethnic Studies course offering can cover, and given that it is not limited to one content area, it is unrealistic to have a single license cover all options. American Experiment believes this will add unnecessary levels of complexity and create the need for a high number of out-of-field permission requests.
American Experiment also believes the overt use of critical social justice concepts throughout the subject matter standards that a teacher of Ethnic Studies must demonstrate politicizes Minnesota’s licensure system and compromises the state’s education standards from political impartiality.
The proposed Ethnic Studies subject matter standards are not written in a way that present a range of perspectives and theories but instead present concepts and content with leading questions and predetermined answers.
For example, the tone of the subject matter standards reveals an evident political bias throughout given the prevalence of words such as “oppression,” “decolonial”/ “colonized,” “settler-colonialism,” “power,” “privilege,” and “resistance,” to name a few, which emphasize an “us vs. them” binary and frame complicated history as a zero-sum power struggle. These words also have varied definitions, and no definitions are included to direct teacher preparation programs on how to present these foundationally adversarial words to teachers throughout their coursework.
Additionally, there are many instances within the proposed subject matter standards where the word “understand” is used to denote how a teacher of Ethnic Studies is to demonstrate the knowledge and skills listed. As Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives reminds us, “understand” is not a measurable verb. It is ambiguous and should be avoided, as it risks introducing subjectivity into deciding whether or not a teacher has adequately and completely demonstrated the required content in his or her teacher preparation program.
Politicized licensure requirements will profoundly influence the beliefs and attitudes of young Minnesotans in public K-12 classrooms, whose education should be free from ideological influence.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Catrin Wigfall