SF Public Schools Are Set for New History Textbooks for the First Time in 20 Years

San Francisco public schools will introduce new history and social studies materials in elementary and high school classrooms for the first time in more than 20 years next fall, under a curriculum overhaul set to be approved this month.

The city’s school board is also set to permanently shelve its pioneering ethnic studies curriculum in favor of an off-the-shelf alternative after the homegrown course was put on pause following controversy last summer.

Superintendent Maria Su said the new history and social studies materials will replace sorely outdated textbooks — in which George W. Bush is president of the United States and self-driving cars and smartphones are still far-off ideas.

“That day not only happened already, but it happened like five years ago,” Su said. “We’re way behind on this.”

Generally, school districts update their curriculum every six to 10 years.

Su said the overhaul will include lesson planning materials to teach modern world history and social science, meaning teachers will no longer have to augment the curriculum to cover events in the 21st century.

“We can’t be a world-class school district if we’re using a curriculum that is 20 years old,” she said. “Our students deserve to have updated materials that really embrace the new way of thinking in our city, in our state, in our country.”

The new elementary and high school curriculum from InquirEd and McGraw Hill will go before a San Francisco Unified School District board of education vote later this month, on the district’s recommendation. SFUSD plans to continue using its middle school course materials, though they will be refurbished to reflect the current day.

The vote comes four years after SFUSD began a process in which central office educators reviewed available curriculum programs and an 80-person team of school site educators and community members evaluated the top selections.

For the last two school years, 40 elementary school classrooms and 35 high school classrooms have piloted the top options, which the district has recommended for adoption. The overhaul is expected to cost the district about $7.3 million for the next five years of physical and digital course materials.

At the middle school level, SFUSD said none of the programs that were evaluated surpassed the performance of the current program, TCI’s History Alive. The district said it will continue to use History Alive, while continuing to review newly released instructional materials.

The social science curriculum changes follow similar program overhauls for English language arts and mathematics. In 2024, SFUSD adopted a new language arts core curriculum for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, and in the fall, it rolled out a new math curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade.

“I am proud to follow through on our promise to provide a world-class education for every student — this is about making sure that we are setting our students up for success today and into the future,” Su said in a statement announcing the curriculum.

The board will also vote on standardized ninth-grade ethnic studies course materials, after the district’s homegrown curriculum, developed by educators over the last 15 years, caused controversy last summer.

SFUSD has been lauded as a leader in ethnic studies throughout the state, first introducing the course as an elective in 2010 and making it a yearlong requirement for ninth graders in 2024.

Studies showed improved graduation outcomes for students who took the course, and the district’s success was cited by state lawmakers when they enacted a mandate for California public schools to require a semester of ethnic studies in 2021. That policy was set to take effect last year, but it hasn’t been implemented due to budget constraints.

San Francisco’s course came under scrutiny last year following multiple reports from the national group Parents Defending Education, which has opposed lessons about racism, social justice, sexual orientation and gender identity. The group obtained a trove of SFUSD ethnic studies teachers’ lesson plans, curriculum and miscellaneous documents through public records requests, and accused the course of being “activist-driven” and biased.

Media coverage cited one in-class activity that asked students to role-play as Israeli soldiers putting Palestinians into refugee camps, and a slide deck that compared civil rights and other social movements to the Red Guards, an often-violent youth movement supporting Mao Zedong during China’s cultural revolution in the 1960s.

Ethnic studies teachers at the time told KQED they had never seen the documents or taught those lessons, but the curriculum was put aside by Su and replaced with an off-the-shelf option used in other districts across California.

In the fall, SFUSD piloted Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey, by Gibbs Smith Education, which it’s now recommending as the permanent curriculum. The district said the Voices curriculum was the only one reviewed by an evaluation committee, which included 16 ethnic studies teachers and 15 other district educators, plus a handful of community members.

Su said it’s been well-received thus far, which is why she’s choosing to recommend it for permanent use.

The school board is set to vote on the curriculum changes April 28.