National Experts Highly Critical of Minnesota’s Social Studies Standards
MDE largely disregarded feedback from handpicked reviewers
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A data practices act request from the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) revealed that national reviewers hand-selected by Gov. Tim Walz’s own agency were severely critical of the draft K-12 social studies standards recently approved by an administrative law judge. The department is legally required to send the draft standards out for review but did not disclose the expert reviews until American Experiment used a public data request to obtain them.
Three of the four expert reviewers — with years of experience related to social studies subject matter — criticized the standards and benchmarks. Reviewers highlighted not only political bias but numerous examples of broad and imprecise wording, definition and contextual problems, and immeasurability. Click here to keep reading.