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Santa Ana Unified needs to open up ethnic studies development in full public view

February 26, 2025

How did this happen? Earlier this month the Santa Ana Unified School District reached a settlement with the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and other Jewish groups to shelve ethnic studies courses after the 2024-25 school year “until they are redesigned with public input,” reported the Register.

It’s alarming that, in this age of public demands for government transparency, the curriculum was developed in secret. According to the legal settlement, any future courses must be “re-approved by the Board of Education at a public meeting.”

As noted by Voice of OC, the settlement requires the district to recognize the controversial nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but to tread carefully and critically in how it teaches the issue.

“Materials that, for example, teach, state, or imply that the Jewish people do not have a right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor) or teach, describe, or refer to double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation shall not be used unless taught through an appropriate critical lens,” according to the settlement.

The controversy has its origins in 2021. After working with Jewish groups, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 101, mandating “ethnic studies” for high-school graduation, with guardrails in place supposedly to prevent problems such as that in Santa Ana. Now, responding to the settlement, Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles, introduced yet another law, Assembly Bill 1468. It would require the state Department of Education to “develop and adopt academically rigorous content standards for ethnic studies instruction in high school.”

The curriculum would be designed by a new “advisory committee,” with a majority of members “being experts in African American studies, Asian American and Pacific Islander studies, Native American studies and Latino and Chicanx studies.” So a local problem would become a state problem supposedly solved by yet another government committee.

“The devil is in the details when designing such a curriculum, and the details often are worked out by activists,” Lance Izumi told us; he’s the senior director of educational studies at the Pacific Research Institute. He said each school day has only so many hours, “and the more hours you spend on indoctrination, the fewer you spend on basic courses such as reading and math.”

On the 2024 California Smarter Balanced test, only 31% of SAUSD students met or exceeded English Language standards and 21% met or exceeded math standards. How can students even really understand ethnic studies if they can’t read the texts, or parse demographic statistics?

Ultimately, what California really ought to do is just scrap ethnic studies requirements entirely and ensure students in public schools can master the basics. That would help avoid the problem of politicized and overly ideological ethnic studies courses and curricula proliferating across the state. In the meantime, though, any of these matters need to be aired out publicly and transparently so parents and the taxpaying public know what’s going on in public schools.

Orange County Register

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Santa Ana Unified needs to open up ethnic studies development in full public view

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