Protests from San Francisco teachers and principals in June saved a required ethnic studies class in public schools from being shelved. But some parents are still complaining, saying that the course was hastily developed, is too advanced for freshmen, and contains problematic material.
But the students, it seems, disagree.
In end-of-year surveys of freshmen who took San Francisco’s ethnic studies class in the 2024-2025 school year, 85 percent said that the course made them feel good about themselves as students, an 11 percent increase from the year before. A full 92 percent said it encouraged them to work with students from different backgrounds.
Studies performed by Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education also found that San Francisco Unified School District students who were enrolled in ethnic studies graduate at a rate of 90 percent, compared to their peers’ 75 percent. Their grades improved in all classes, the study found, and they were more likely to enroll in college.
“This benefitted them in a really profound and lasting way,” Emily Penner, one of the researchers, said. “You just don’t see educational interventions with that kind of impact.”
Mission Local spoke to seven former students who had taken the course about their take. All said that their ethnic studies classes encouraged them to think deeper about family histories and that, though the class could be intense, classrooms felt supportive and open to dialogue.
Several students highlighted the positive impacts of lessons that dealt directly with issues in San Francisco, including redlining, gentrification, youth activism and how to get involved in their communities. The curriculum was developed in San Francisco more than a decade ago by city-based educators.
Parents opposed to ethnic studies curricula say that they make white students feel bad about a past history that they don’t have any control over or understand.
That’s not what Taytum Wymer, a senior at George Washington University who is white and took ethnic studies as a senior at Lowell High School in 2022, experienced in his class. “It really makes you think. It’s not about individual guilt. These classes don’t encourage students to feel bad or guilty.”
Riley, a junior at Lowell High School who took ethnic studies for a semester during his freshman year, said the “discomfort” that has riled parents up is exactly why the class was important to him. The course covered Japanese internment, the Syrian civil war, the Tuskegee syphilis study, and lynching in America.
There were uncomfortable truths, but the classes helped a very diverse group of high-schoolers “understand each other’s lived experiences,” Riley said.
Parents, some of them associated with political groups like the well-funded Blueprint for a Better San Francisco and the Westside Family Democratic Club, however, have continued to voice concerns that the course, which was previously offered across grade levels, is divisive, not unifying.
Blueprint, the new iteration of the big-money group TogetherSF, linked to a petition signed by “SFUSD parents” calling on the school board to immediately rescind the ethnic studies requirement. The school board has no plans to do so.
But last month, Superintendent Maria Su dropped the curriculum developed over the 15 years the course has been offered as an elective in the city, and replaced it with a new, pre-packaged course.
Some parents critiquing the class mentioned an activity that was part of the course’s resource library that had students sort themselves by race. Several Jewish parents said that they worry that lessons about Israel, Palestine and the war in Gaza are too advanced and nuanced for high-school freshmen to understand, and could lead to antisemitism in schools.
“It’s not being presented as there’s an alternative view or there’s alternative beliefs,” said Alex Tico, who has two high school-aged children in the district. “Teaching history in binaries is not setting our students up for success,” said Natasha Saravanja, who has a third-grader in public school.
Parents, politics and prepackaged curriculum
Ethnic studies has been offered by some high schools in the city as an elective for 15 years. It became a year-long required course for freshmen at the beginning of the last school year, though Mission High School has automatically enrolled all freshmen in the class for years.
Controversy over the course ramped up after a series of local news articles brought attention to the most extreme examples of course materials.
Concerned parents homed in on a few examples of what they said were harmful historical misinterpretation: An optional lesson in which students role-play Israeli soldiers and Palestinians, and a since-deleted but often-referenced mention of the “Red Guard” as an activist group.
The material circulated through Facebook groups and WhatsApp messages between parents and gained steam. They thought the Red Guards were a mention to violent, Maoist revolutionaries in China. But Nikhil Laud, the coordinator for the Ethnic Studies Department, clarified that the allusion was to the 1970s revolutionary group based in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Still, he acknowledged that the curriculum was imperfect.
Asked about the widespread student satisfaction with the course, several parents who oppose the ethnic studies requirement said that students might feel uncomfortable voicing opinions that contradict their peers or are not intellectually mature enough as freshmen to handle the nuances of ethnic studies.
The student satisfaction survey was anonymous, and students were not required to fill it out.
The current and former students, for their part, described SFUSD’s ethnic studies course as markedly different from their other classes, which focus on grades and taking tests. They said their teachers told them at the beginning of the year that they could excuse themselves from classes that made them feel overwhelmed.
Most called it appropriately academically rigorous and on par with their other classes. They said that their ethnic studies classes centered around developing critical thinking skills and working on projects that often centered around their identities or ethnic histories, including interviews with family members.
“It made me feel stronger, and allowed me to learn a lot about my culture,” said Asante, a sophomore at Mission High School who took the class last school year.
Four district graduates told Mission Local that taking ethnic studies encouraged them to pick social-science majors.
Mikayla Banawa, who recently graduated from New York University, took ethnic studies in her freshman year at George Washington High School in 2018. “It helped me become a better leader for my school,” said Banawa, who later became student body president. “Something as small as our school fights or drama didn’t matter as much when we were learning about each others’ histories.”
For next year’s curriculum, administrators are likely to select “Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey,” created by the textbook company Gibbs Smith Education, according to Laud, the coordinator for the Ethnic Studies Department. Several school districts in California already use this book, though none are as big as San Francisco’s.
Riley, the junior at Lowell, said that he has had conversations with his peers about how the shift to a ready-made curriculum feels like a “washed-out, watered-down topic that is less about how these concepts impact us.”
“We’re no longer able to put ourselves into the picture,” he said.
I guess some students say otherwise. My rising 10th grader says it was just disorganized, useless, slow, and kind of a joke – and he liked his teacher.
It’s entirely possible students enjoyed the class because it was easy and a good opportunity to socialize due to a healthy amount of downtime, which is how it was described to me by several of my students friends.
This gets to a broader point at SFUSD – the school district (central office) is unable to build and curate appropriate curriculums and classes. The ones they have built are poor, but some teachers are quite good at building their own (even though they really need help). If this was a company, the teachers who objectively did a good job would be the ones whose curriculum and lessons were adopted across the district and they’d get a nice little bonus for the effort.
Several of these testimonials are from when it was an elective. I’d bet it really was a better, more rigorous and intense class then — when all the students in it had chosen to be there, or at least had parents who really wanted them to be there.
From several of the sources in the article it sounds pretty clear that the way this course works is highly dependent on the engagement that the students bring to it. That can make for an excellent class when there’s a roomful of students who are eager to put a lot of energy into it. But when half the kids didn’t want to be there and would rather coast and focus on their other classes… then “useless, slow, and kind of a joke” is a likely outcome, even for the students who would have wanted to go deeper.
A pre-packaged curriculum will probably be better for keeping things moving in that required-class environment. It’s just a shame that the kids who actually wanted a class like this will be getting a bland generic version, instead of the version the district was able to offer when it was an elective.
I’m proud that SF offers ethnic studies classes, but making it a required / mandatory course is obnoxious. We will not tolerate intolerance! LOL
“It’s not being presented as there’s an alternative view or there’s alternative beliefs,” said Alex Tico, who has two high school-aged children in the district.
Reality exists, and, no, there are not two sides to every story. Every worldview is not equally valid.
“Teaching history in binaries is not setting our students up for success,” said Natasha Saravanja, who has a third-grader in public school.
So that’s also incorrect. There are lots of binaries, in lots of subjects, that correspond to reality.
These folks just don’t like the ugly truth of the U.S.’ history towards ethnic minorities (yes, even though some of them *are* from ethnic minorities) but they’re too gutless to say so.
as a parent with 4 kinds in the public schools system, and on the PTA board of 2 schools, I can say that there are like 3 actual parents who came and complain about “diversity”, when really it was “why are we teaching kids to be f**ts?” and a list of books they got from Fox news. Maybe there are a pile of them out there that are secretly all about this, but do they show up at PTA meetings? nope. Do they show up at fundraisers? nope. Do they donate butt-loads of money to right-wing PACs? yep.
“Four district graduates told Mission Local that taking ethnic studies encouraged them to pick social-science majors.”
That in itself is a reason to get rid of the class. Four students were inspired to choose college majors that will lead them to not being able to repay their student loans for decades.
Sorry, Mission Local interns. I know you were all social-science majors. That’s why you’re interns at a journalism nonprofit. Thank you for your service … but the cold fact is non social-science majors are going to make more money.
The link to an interview with Alex Hing of the mostly forgotten SF Bay area Red Guards group is fascinating.
https://aaww.org/counterculturalist-alex-hing/
I am now so curious if he’s aware someone in the SFUSD ethnic studies department knows his history.
I had no idea but I read the interview and it’s really interesting. This is lost SF history until now.
Thank you!
Also, “Alex Tico” is listed as having two high-school-aged kids. Except that Google searches for “Alex Tico” + “San Francisco” show someone who was in high school in 2012, making him between 27 and 30 years old now. That’s… a bit of a stretch for having high-school-aged kids. Not impossible, mind, and it could be a different Alex Tico. But it’s a little odd.