Minnesota’s new social studies standards, including ethnic studies, will go into effect in 2026, after an administrative law judge upheld almost all of the proposed standards in a report released Tuesday. Before the standards can go into effect, the Minnesota Department of Education must approve a minor tweak.
The new standards will add ethnic studies to Minnesota’s social studies standards for the first time. Advocates say that incorporating ethnic studies into the social studies standards will better reflect Minnesota’s diverse students by teaching more robust histories of different racial and ethnic groups, and connecting historical struggles to the present.
Marcus Penny, communications manager for Education Evolving, an advocacy group that supported the revised standards, praised the judge’s decision.
“The process is behind us, and we can look forward to this opportunity for students to learn standards that are more honest and equitable, that honor their humanity and help them see themselves and see one another better in their social studies education,” he said.
The report by Administrative Law Judge Eric Lipman concludes a nearly four-year process. Under state law, all academic standards—the major concepts and skills all Minnesota public schools are expected to teach—must be revised every 10 years, on a rotating schedule. Lipman’s task was to determine whether the Minnesota Department of Education had followed the proper process in creating the standards, and whether the standards were necessary and reasonable.
Overall, Lipman concluded, the Minnesota Department of Education had done its job properly.
“Through the proposed standards, MDE has sought to convey lessons on how political institutions and shared ideals can connect diverse populations to a single set of communal processes for decision-making,” Lipman wrote. “In this way, MDE has taken on the work that is described on our nation’s seal: E pluribus unum; out of many peoples, one.”
However, Lipman also identified a legal defect in one part of the ethnic studies standards. He then submitted his findings to Minnesota’s chief administrative law judge, Jenny Starr. She concurred with his findings and his proposed revisions.
The standard in which Lipman found a legal defect reads: “The student will use ethnic and Indigenous studies methods and sources in order to understand the roots of contemporary systems of oppression and apply lessons from the past in order to eliminate historical and contemporary injustices.”
“A plain reading of the text suggests that each student must eliminate a historical and contemporary injustice to satisfy the academic standard,” Lipman wrote. “This expectation is unduly vague, because those who are subject to the standard cannot know what is needed to meet the requirements and strict compliance is unreasonable and implausible.”
Lipman offered two potential revisions for the Minnesota Department of Education in order to create a similar standard that he would uphold; he also said the agency could come up with its own language. One of Lipman’s suggested revisions would change just a few words. Instead of applying lessons from the past in order to eliminate historical and contemporary injustices, students would apply lessons from the past that could eliminate these injustices.
The judge’s report brings the process nearly to its conclusion, but a few procedural steps still remain. The Minnesota Department of Education must post the report publicly for five days before taking action. Then the agency can submit its preferred remedy to the legal defect to Starr, the chief administrative law judge. According to a spokesperson for the Office of Administrative Hearings, Starr must then review and approve or disapprove the change within five working days.
The Minnesota Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Penny, the communications manager of Education Evolving, said his group was “very pleased” with the judge’s report, and hoped that the Minnesota Department of Education would adopt Lipman’s proposal to swap out those three words.
The proposed social studies standards generated tens of thousands of public comments over the four-year rulemaking process. Students and teachers of color spoke in support of the new standards, saying they would make schools more reflective of everyone’s history and experience. A group of several Republican legislators submitted comments criticizing the proposed standards; Lipman, a former Republican legislator himself, wrote that he disagreed with their criticism.
One group leading opposition to the standards, the conservative think tank Center of the American Experiment, had hoped that the judge would strike down the entire set of standards.
In a 2021 online petition, the think tank asked signers to tell the governor “not to shove Critical Race Theory down our students’ throats during social studies class.” In one comment period alone, the group generated more than 17,000 responses opposing the standards.
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In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Catrin Wigfall, education policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, called the judge’s decision “very disappointing.”
“Although we are pleased Judge Lipman listened to our feedback and declared part of the standards ‘unduly vague’ and ‘weak,’ he should have applied this same reasoning to the entire rule,” Wigfall wrote. “Judge Lipman took a very narrow look at how the standards technically met the requirements of the rulemaking process, and the result is a standards document that will at best confuse teachers and students and at worst force them to endorse a divisive and conflict-based ideology.”
A 36-member committee of Minnesota teachers, parents, university professors, and tribal representatives developed the standards in a process that began in 2020 and coincided with a global pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and a national racial reckoning based in Minneapolis. As part of that reckoning, many students of color spoke up about the need for instructional materials that better reflected their diverse histories and experiences. But the racial reckoning also led to a backlash—including pushback nationally and locally to more diverse histories and teaching methods in schools.
Lipman’s decision to largely uphold the proposed standards means that beginning in the 2026-27 school year, Minnesota social studies classes will incorporate ethnic studies concepts like social identities and resistance movements alongside themes of citizenship and government, economics, geography, and history. The revised standards will also include more emphasis on Indigenous history and culture. And instead of a rote memorization model, the new standards will encourage critical thinking.
During the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers also passed a requirement that Minnesota high schools offer an ethnic studies class beginning in the 2026-27 school year. In many schools, those ethnic studies classes will be electives. The new social studies standards will bring ethnic studies principles into all Minnesota students’ social studies education from kindergarten through 12th grade, whether or not they opt to take a separate ethnic studies class.
The nearly four-year rulemaking process grew contentious at times. Committee members said they felt that the Minnesota Department of Education was disregarding large parts of their work. They also felt personally targeted by some opponents of the revised standards, who posted their names and workplaces online.
But on Tuesday, Danyika Leonard, the policy director of Education Evolving and one of the 36 members of the social studies standards committee, said she saw the group’s work reflected in the standards.
“We want our scholars to learn about each other and appreciate each other’s humanity,” she said.
With the review process all but concluded, Leonard said, she was ready to get to work on the next phase: putting the new standards into practice.
