Trump memo puts Walz administration on notice re: ethnic studies

The next (and perhaps final) chapter in Minnesota’s journey to dramatically change how we teach children is about to begin. The journey began in December 2020 when the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) released the first draft of revised social studies standards. The new standards fundamentally changed the way we approach the teaching of history, geography, economics, and citizenship and government. More importantly, the standards introduced a new fifth strand of social studies called ethnic studies. The standards must be implemented by the 2026-27 school year and teach students to view the world through the lens of race, power and “resistance,” in every grade.

Empowered by their success with the standards, the Walz-led legislature then passed an ethnic studies law that requires every school to offer an ethnic studies course and embed liberated ethnic studies throughout all academic standards, from history class to physical education. American Experiment warned about radical ethnic studies in this 2022 Thinking Minnesota piece, Doubling down on CRT.

The 2023 ethnic studies law created an Ethnic Studies Framework Working Group, which was quickly stacked with radicals by MDE. The leader of the group was Brian Lozenski, founder of the Minnesota Ethnic Studies Coalition (MESC) and a professor at Macalester College. You can learn more about Lozenski’s view of America here:

Professor Lozenski and the bureaucrats at MDE went to work last summer devising the Ethnic Studies Framework that teachers would use to accomplish the radical change in teaching and learning called for in the new law. The framework was supposed to be released to the public in October, but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Gov. Tim Walz was selected as the Democratic nominee for vice-president. Suddenly, MDE clammed up and began stalling the release of the framework. We knew it had been completed because the meetings to develop the framework were open to the public (mostly). But they wouldn’t release the draft.

So American Experiment politely asked MDE to provide the draft that we knew existed. When they refused, a formal data practices request was submitted. When they stalled that, the Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC) was brought in, and a lawsuit was filed. MDE went to a lot of trouble to keep the draft under cover.

The lawsuit was successful (more on that later) and the draft ethnic studies framework was supplied to American Experiment with a very interesting cover memo from MDE. They sent us the framework but stated it will not be adopted in its current form because it doesn’t comply with the social studies standards. From the cover memo:

The working group’s submission, included in the subsequent pages of this document, will not be adopted by MDE in its current form as it does not appear to satisfy the requirements of the law because it does not align with K-12 academic standards.

MDE claimed their hand-picked volunteer committee went too far and the draft framework doesn’t align with standards. But how? Sadly, it looks perfectly aligned with the standards and the new ethnic studies law. Remember, this is Minnesota’s new statutory definition of ethnic studies:

120B.25 ETHNIC STUDIES.

“Ethnic studies” means the interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity with a focus on the experiences and perspectives of people of color within and beyond the United States. Ethnic studies analyzes the ways in which race and racism have been and continue to be social, cultural, and political forces, and the connection of race to the stratification of other groups, including stratification based on the protected classes under section 363A.13.

The framework’s content explains MDE’s reluctance to release it: The document lays out a multi-faceted ground plan to transform our schools’ mission from providing students with academic knowledge and skills to grooming political activists.

The Framework sets out a blueprint for reframing public education in four dramatic ways:

1. It shifts the mission of public education from academic instruction to political activism.

• It pressures teachers to conform their personal identity and beliefs to Ethnic Studies ideology; become “anti-racist advocates;” and cede authority in the classroom to students as “co-creators of knowledge.”

• It calls on all public schools to make building Ethnic Studies infrastructure and resources a top priority that takes precedence over other educational needs.

• It undermines local control of public schools, shifting decision-making power from elected school board members to MDE, students and “racialized” community advocacy groups.

The Framework recommends that teachers use skewed, ideologically freighted Ethnic Studies K-12 curricula, designed to enlist vulnerable children behind an extremist political agenda. The materials portray Minnesota as Alabama in the 1930s and never mention America’s Civil Rights laws.

Some examples:

Grades K-2

Text: My Powerful Hair.

• Using this book, the teacher leads children in a discussion of discrimination based on “racialized hair texture and styles”—comparing hair-cutting practices of “Indigenous and Black communities.” (dreadlocks and Indian boarding schools)
• Students partner with a “local indigenous organization” to “map the Indigenous community pre/post colonialism.”

Grades 3-5

• Students study “solidarity movements like the “Third World Liberation Front and the Delano grape strike.”
• The teacher asks questions like: “what is power?;” “who holds it?;” how do “institutions, like schools, oppress groups based on race?;” and how do “we redistribute power to create equitable…ecosystems?”
• Students “take pictures of how they feel about school” and express “what it’s like to be racialized in school.”
• They study “the need for organizing” in “a racialized society” and meet regularly with local activist groups “to build and sustain relationships.”
• They learn about “contemporary protest dancing” and create their own original “dances of resistance.”

Grades 6-8

• Text: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, A Remix, by Ibram X. Kendi.
• Students study how race is “socially constructed,” using resources like “How Did Jews Become White Folks?”
• They “explore George Floyd Square” and “drive around the Twin Cities area to look at the murals and artistic pieces combatting racism.”  (“Experiential learning.”)
• They learn about “Black Power as resistance”; “explore” the “Mapping Prejudice” website; and study racial covenants and “how different groups fought against” them.

Grades 9-12

• Students study lynchings in Duluth in 1920 and take a field trip to a memorial site there.

Minnesota at odds with Trump administration

At this point, MDE hasn’t articulated exactly why they haven’t released the draft framework, but a new reason to hold it back or possibly never release it came in the form of a memo from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Arriving on Valentine’s Day, this love letter was sent to all 50 state education departments and gives them 14 days to remove all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programming in all public schools. Failure to comply will result in the loss of federal education funding.

It’s hard to see how Minnesota’s radical ethnic studies framework will pass the Trump administration’s test. From the OCR memo:

Other programs discriminate in less direct, but equally insidious, ways. DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not. Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.

The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions. The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.

Everything Tim Walz has put into place from social studies standards to teacher training to radical ethnic studies is in direct violation of this memo. The OCR should begin their work in Minnesota if they are looking to make an example for other states. The new Ethnic Studies regime will impose a monumental, costly and self-destructive burden on our state’s overstressed public schools, at a time when a majority of Minnesota students can’t read or do math at grade level.

A bill (HF29) to repeal ethnic studies and delay implementation of the social studies standards will be heard Tuesday, February 18, by the Minnesota House Education Policy Committee. If MDE shows up to testify, they should be asked to explain their sudden bashfulness about the ethnic studies framework, and tell the committee how they intend to comply with the federal Office of Civil Rights.