School Achievement
The United States welcomes nearly 1 million new citizens each year through naturalization ceremonies. Each of these new citizens must pass a US citizenship test in which they are required to answer at least 6 out of 10 questions correctly. 90% of legal immigrant applicants pass this exam.
But civic knowledge in American citizens is abysmal - only 30% of adults can pass this test. Fewer than half of American adults can name the three branches of government, and one quarter cannot name any branch at all. A quarter of Americans can’t name any of the five freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment.
Even more alarming is the fact that just 3% of public high school students in the United States can pass the citizenship test. To that point, National Assessment of Educational Progress scores released in mid-2023 indicated that eighth graders’ understanding of US history continued a decade of decline with only 13% of students scoring proficient in history and only 22% scoring proficient in civics.
The implication of these statistics is that a very large proportion of students lacking a strong foundation in these subjects are entering high schools where civics and history are facing highly politicized debates over content and instruction.
"The wake-up calls keep coming. Education leaders and policymakers must create opportunities for students to gain the knowledge and skills they need to catch up and thrive. The students who took these tests are in high school today and will soon enter college and the workforce without the knowledge and skills they need to fully participate in civic life and our democracy. And let's not forget, these are the same students whose reading and math scores last fall raised alarm bells nationwide. We are failing our children if we do not act now,” said Beverly Perdue, National Assessment Governing Board chair and former North Carolina governor. The Governing Board sets policy and determines achievement levels for the Nation’s Report Card, the only nationally representative assessment of student achievement in the U.S.
“There are a number of schools implementing outstanding history and civics programs for youth in California and across the nation. But sadly, they are the exception and not the norm,” said Michelle Herczog, coordinator of history and social science instruction for the Los Angeles County Office of Education. “The dismal NAEP findings need to be a call to action for every American school, beginning in kindergarten, to energize the teaching of U.S. history and civics in non-partisan ways, as an educational priority.”
In 2021, California became the first state to require ethnic studies (ES) for high school graduation (AB-101). This requirement was purportedly passed in order to help students become better educated citizens by honestly portraying American history and positively focusing on the scientific, artistic, economic, cultural, and social achievements of different groups of people.
Proponents of this high school requirement claimed that ethnic studies courses improved academic achievement overall, but a 2022 critique of the single quantitative study cited as proof of these claims completed by UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania found that “no conclusion” could be drawn from the data, and that the study “should not have been published . . . much less relied upon in the formation of public policy.”
Two years prior, ethnic studies curriculum drafted by a small group of activist educators was rejected by Governor Newsom, state officials, legislators on both sides of the aisle, and California residents who submitted more than 19,000 negative comments, largely because of its overtly anti-Jewish and divisive content. This included support for the boycott, divest, sanctions movement, a Palestinian activist push with ties to Hamas, as well as a song teaching children that Jews control the world media.
Disgruntled by the rejection of their curriculum recommendations, group members launched their own business in 2021, the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMCC), in order to monetize their activism by charging tens of thousands of dollars in fees for their professional development and curriculum services. Within just a few months the group was speaking at government-sponsored conferences, doing consulting, and gaining traction with county offices of education.
LESMCC is just one of 33 member groups affiliated with the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies (CLES). CLES went on record Immediately after the October 7 massacre of Israeli citizens by Hamas terrorists, blaming Israel and the United States for the atrocities committed by Hamas. They urged their members to participate in a rally supporting the terrorists and promoted calls for the destruction of Israel. This is the same group that numerous school districts are considering hiring or have already hired as a partner in providing Ethnic Studies in K-12 classrooms, training teachers, and developing curricula. With California tax dollars, LESMCC has already been hired to write the ethnic studies courses for the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, Hayward Unified School District, and Salinas Union High School District.
Liberated Ethnic Studies activists are well connected, highly organized, and deeply committed to establishing a radical pedagogy and using our public school system as a vehicle to normalize their ideology, according to Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky, who, in February 2024, published an account of her experiences working with CLES.
According to Dr. Shufutinsky, the purpose of CLES was not to expand on social studies, including the experiences of Black, Asian, Latino and Native Americans, but rather to critique the foundations of Western democratic values by labeling them as tenets of white supremacy; to center Palestine, Critical Race Theory, and Black Lives Matter as essential components of ethnic studies; to silence anyone they labeled as Zionist or conservative; to hijack the experiences, histories, and narratives of ethnic communities; and to establish a monopoly over everything related to ethnic studies.
One of CLES’ methods was to form a cohort of students from across the US who would act as a youth activist arm of CLES and advocate for Liberated Ethnic Studies in their school districts. Students were provided resources such as a statement of solidarity and land acknowledgment that expanded on their “collective commitment to dismantle white supremacy globally.”
After spending almost two years within the organization, Dr. Shufutinsky “realized how important it is to … expose just how deep the rot has become. Our children deserve educators committed to teaching, not using students as their personal ideologically driven foot-soldiers … Close to 50 million students are enrolled in public schools in the United States. These students are a captive audience to whatever pedagogy educators and educational policymakers mandate.”
In California numerous school districts and departments of education are adopting just the kind of ethnic studies programs that legislators, the governor, and the public explicitly opposed. In addition, the LESMCC has leveraged its members’ positions as faculty members in ethnic studies departments in the University of California and California State University systems to stress the “liberated” approach in the training of ethnic studies teachers, who will in turn bring it to high school classrooms throughout California.
According to Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the director of AMCHA Initiative, a non-partisan nonprofit dedicated to combating antisemitism in colleges and universities, Liberated Ethnic Studies is already being presented in some California classrooms, which has led to some destructive situations, including a biracial student who identifies as Black being told to address his “White dominance” and a child of Cuban heritage who was told he wasn’t a “real Latino.”
Rossman-Benjamin goes on to explain that the Liberated Ethnic Studies program is not just about Ethnic Studies courses, but the program advocates that other courses, including math and science, be integrated with ES principles. Since, according to LES, capitalism oppresses minorities, Marxism should be taught as an alternative, which requires that teachers have the “correct political views.”
LES is not a course which celebrates the contributions of people from different ethnic groups and how so many immigrants have achieved the American dream. Rather, it is a course that teaches that the United States is a racist society that is hostile and punitive to non-Whites.
Fortunately, California’s ethnic studies graduation law can be suspended under the terms of the bill itself, which states the requirement becomes operative “only upon an appropriation of funds by the legislature.” This fail-safe language was inserted at the last-minute after the addition of a series of “guardrail” amendments intended to ensure that any required ethnic studies courses would be “free from bias or bigotry and appropriate for all students.” These amendments reflected the legislators’ legitimate concerns over the growing evidence that groups such as LESMCC were successfully injecting “liberated” ethnic studies into schools across the state. The insertion of this clause also addressed legislator’s fiscal concerns. The State Senate Appropriations Committee estimated the cost to taxpayers would be a whopping $276 million annually, prompting the Department of Finance to oppose it.
California’s prioritization of ethnic studies in our public schools was always questionable, given that the research showing its value was flawed, and that roughly three out of four kids can’t read or do math at grade-level proficiency. AB-101’s “only upon an appropriation of funds” clause can avert this disaster. If the governor and state lawmakers choose not to fund the requirement, school districts will be free to not require it. Instead of worrying about how to implement an academically empty and divisive requirement that will do nothing to aid failing students, schools can turn their attention to those academic programs that can actually help California students to achieve and thrive.