UC considers imposing criteria for California’s high school ethnic studies classes
Categories: US Education News
An influential committee of University of California faculty that oversees academic admissions requirements is proposing that UC set criteria and content for high school ethnic studies courses similar to what the State Board of Education rejected two years ago as divisive.
If adopted, the requirements (see pages 11-12) would circumvent both a state law and the ethnic studies model curriculum that the state board adopted in March 2021. Both give local districts the authority to decide what should be taught in ethnic studies.
As word spread of the proposal, more than 100 faculty members sent a letter sharply criticizing it to UC’s Academic Council, which is made up of leadership of the Academic Senate. Contrary to the admissions requirements to ensure students are intellectually prepared for college work.
The ethnic studies proposal “smacks instead of an attempt to teach students a particular take on a range of highly controversial issues” and “will undoubtedly generate profound opposition,” the letter read. “The university should never be in the position of forcing a particular political agenda upon its own students – let alone all upon UC applicants across the state and the nation.”
Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom marked Gathering Bill 101, making California the principal state to require all understudies to finish a semester-long course in ethnic examinations to procure a secondary school recognition. The order will produce results with the graduating class of 2029-30, albeit secondary schools should begin to offer courses beginning in the 2025-26 school year. AB 101 would leave it up to each district to decide what’s in a course.
It may have hit a snag on March 30, when the Academic Council, which is made up of leadership of the Academic Senate, voted to send the proposal back to BOARS for more work. The council did so after inviting comments from faculty throughout the UC system, said Robert Horwitz, chair of the Academic Council and a professor of communications at UC San Diego.
Members of BOARS expressed concern about the proposal at their October 2021 meeting. According to minutes, “Several found some of the language to be inaccessible, even though it is standard in the discipline. Others found the tone of the proposal to be problematic.” UC will be creating course criteria without the benefit of standards, as there are with Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards.
As a result, “External political and social pressures increase the risk for misunderstandings.”At their next meeting, a majority of BOARS approved the ethnic studies proposal. After five months, the minutes of the meeting haven’t been posted, and members have been asked not to discuss the proposal, one member told EdSource.
The high school ethnic studies teachers and college ethnic studies professors who served as advisers or writers of the state’s first draft disavowed the final version of the model curriculum for diluting the vision and academic discipline of ethnic studies. They formed an alternative, the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, which encourages school districts to adopt the unvarnished first draft as their ethnic studies curriculum.
Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen, lecturer in education studies at UC San Diego and a lead writer of the Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum, is another writer of the UC proposal.“Ethnic studies has always required courage and struggle. UC is at a juncture where it stands to be on the right side of history by adopting an overdue requirement that at long last centers the perspectives and experiences of communities of color in this majority-minority state.”