SFUSD New Ethnic Studies Curriculum Adopted Over Controversy and Some Parents’ Complaints

After years of controversy over course content, San Francisco’s public school district approved a new, permanent ethnic studies curriculum Tuesday.

But pushback over ethnic studies isn’t over, as the vote renewed calls to review the district’s two-semester course mandate.

Long considered a pioneer in the subject matter, San Francisco Unified School District has offered its homegrown curriculum for high schoolers since 2010 — first as an elective, and beginning in 2024, as a graduation requirement taught to all ninth graders.

Last summer, after some parents and a national education group raised concerns about some of its lesson plans, SFUSD briefly considered pausing the requirement, and later opted to set aside its own curriculum in favor of piloting Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey. The program, which is now nearing the end of its year trial run, is also in use in other California school districts, like San Leandro, as well as nationally, according to SFUSD’s website.

The decision came after Parents Defending Education, a group which has opposed lessons about racism, social justice, sexual orientation and gender identity, obtained and published excerpts from a trove of SFUSD ethnic studies teachers’ lesson plans, curriculum and miscellaneous documents — including one activity that asked students to role-play as Israeli soldiers putting Palestinians into refugee camps and another slide deck comparing the civil rights movements to the Red Guards, an often-violent youth movement supporting Mao Zedong during China’s cultural revolution in the 1960s.

Opponents said the course was biased and “activist-driven.” Ethnic studies teachers KQED spoke with at the time said they had never seen the documents or taught those lessons.

Initially, Superintendent Maria Su said that throughout this school year, the district would both audit its own curriculum and pilot Voices, making a decision ahead of the 2027-2028 academic year for how to move forward.

During Wednesday night’s meeting, assistant superintendent of curriculum Devin Krugman said that the audit of SFUSD’s course, conducted by nonprofit group WestEd, found that it “partially” met expectations and required improvement in terms of coherence and connecting explicitly to the state’s model ethnic studies curriculum.

“Based on those audit findings, we, SFUSD, decided not to move the SFUSD ethnic studies curriculum forward to evaluation,” Krugman said.

The district said that, meanwhile, it conducted a thorough review of Voices throughout this academic year through parent, student and teacher surveys, interviews and focus groups and classroom observations.

“The overall feedback was very strong standards alignment,” Krugman said.

But critics say the curriculum selection process for ethnic studies should have been more akin to that for history and social science — which includes reviews of more than a dozen textbooks for different grade levels.

“I ask you not to rubber-stamp the one thing we considered. These students deserve better,” parent Sarah Hall said during the meeting’s public comment period.

The Friends of Lowell Foundation, a nonprofit that played a central role in the debate over merit-based admissions at Lowell High School, also raised procedural concerns, sending a demand letter to the district asking it to postpone the vote.

On its website, it notes the lack of other curriculum for comparison, and said the way that SFUSD agendized the vote — folded into the same agenda item as other history and social science materials — lacked transparency. The board’s agenda does not explicitly mention that it would include approving the ethnic studies course.

The demand letter also calls on SFUSD to make the full curriculum publicly available.

Board member Supryia Ray, who voted against adopting Voices as a pilot last July and again Wednesday night, said she hadn’t been able to access the full curriculum prior to the vote. Board Vice President Jaime Huling said that there was a physical copy of the textbook at SFUSD’s headquarters, and the materials were accessible to the general public through a two-week free trial. She said she’d also requested a full digital copy from the publisher prior to last year’s vote on the pilot, and was granted access.

In addition to procedural issues, Ray also voiced concerns about the curriculum’s content, calling it “politicized.” The board member also questioned whether its roots in “liberated ethnic studies,” which focuses on power and oppression, could impair students’ critical thinking.

“I wonder how many kids will dare to disagree with the Voices framing that they’re given,” she said.

She also cited reporting by the San Francisco Standard that said multiple parents who’d been part of the committee that evaluated the curriculum this spring felt that their opposition wasn’t heard.

Still, the overwhelming majority of students, parents and educators who spoke during the meeting supported the curriculum adoption.

Many students spoke about their experiences in the course, making them feel heard, and board member Matt Alexander noted studies showing that the course has improved academic outcomes for students.

“It’s great to see that the district and the board said … ‘We’re not going to make an ideological issue out of this, we’re actually going to look at the data,’” he said, during the meeting. “I want to thank you for in a difficult and challenging context to not fall prey to the drama and to stay focused on the basics. And ethnic studies is the basics. San Francisco should be really proud.”

The program was approved, along with the new history and social science courses for elementary and high schools. The district said in its review of curriculum options for the middle school level, it did not identify any programs that surpassed the performance of its current one, but would continue to review newly released instructional materials.

While the board approval could mark the end of debate over ethnic studies curriculum in SFUSD, looming questions remain about the course’s future.

During the meeting, Ray called for the board to agendize a discussion of the district’s current two-semester ethnic studies mandate, which was made a graduation requirement in 2021. A few parents who spoke during the meeting called for the course requirement to be lessened to one semester, and Ray said commissioners had received “hundreds” of emails to the same effect in days prior.

In 2021, California passed a one-semester ethnic studies requirement for high schoolers beginning with the class of 2030, but it’s now been stalled without funding.

Most of the board members seemed supportive of the current yearlong requirement, and only Commissioner Parag Gupta said he would support a conversation about the two-semester mandate, but was not sure now was the right time.

Both the history and ethnic studies curriculum changes are set to take effect next fall.