(Center of the American Experiment) — Gov. Tim Walz’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) wants a new Ethnic Studies teaching license that would require teachers to “analyze social and human relationships with the natural world through Indigenous, pre-colonial, decolonial, and post-colonial lenses.”
Teachers who hold the license would be “authorized to provide instruction in the interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity to students in prekindergarten through grade 12,” according to the proposed licensure rules.
PELSB states its separate teaching license for Ethnic Studies is needed to “address a 2023 Minnesota law that requires Ethnic Studies in schools.” Minnesota high schools must offer an Ethnic Studies course starting in the 2026-27 school year, and elementary and middle schools must offer Ethnic Studies instruction by the 2027-28 school year.
The state’s controversial 2021 K-12 social studies standards, set to be implemented during the 2026-27 school year, also include Ethnic Studies. As other required academic standards come up for review and revision—math, physical education, science, language arts, health, and the arts—Ethnic Studies will be embedded throughout those standards as well. PELSB states its proposed new licensure “will help ensure that Ethnic Studies teachers meet statewide academic standards.”
A bill before the Minnesota Legislature—HF 29—would repeal the statewide liberated ethnic studies mandates and suspend the implementation of the 2021 social studies standards. (Contact your legislators here and encourage them to support HF 29.)
‘Subject matter standards’
Some examples of other “subject matter standards” an Ethnic Studies teacher would have to demonstrate “knowledge and skills in” to be licensed include:
- “understand how Indigeneity, race, gender, and other markers of identity are constructed and how these structures are maintained through power and language”
- “understand how counternarratives serve to deconstruct dominant narratives that reproduce the status quo, power, and and oppression, including:
- (a) counternarratives of resistance and activism within communities that have historically faced oppression”
- understand “how identity is constructed by systems of power and people in positions of privilege”
- “understand and apply critical frameworks to analyze how historical structures of power and domination impact intersectional historical and contemporary inequalities at individual and societal levels, including:
- (a) historical and ongoing social constructions of race and white supremacy;
- (b) how power is defined and created and how it affects Black and Indigenous communities and other communities of color;
- (c) the history of slavery, settler-colonialism, genocide, neocolonialism, imperialism, and capitalism;
- (d) intersectional identities and the interlocking nature of power and oppression;
- (e) the four I’s of oppression: ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression”
- “understand and apply critical frameworks to analyze histories of collective liberation, resistance, and social transformation”
- understand how to “hold schools accountable to colonial structures in educational settings”
It is one thing to present a range of perspectives, but how the above content is presented results in leading questions, predetermined answers, and imposed political ideology.
As American Experiment has well-documented over the years, this “liberated” version of ethnic studies is rooted in narrow ideologies that emphasize an “us vs. them” binary—“oppression,” “decolonization,” “settler-colonialism,” “dispossession,” and “resistance”—and frames complicated history as a zero-sum power struggle.
This Ethnic Studies licensure pathway is another example of Minnesota’s alarming restructuring of its public education system.
Public comment period now open
A public comment period on the proposed ethnic studies teaching license is open until 4:30 p.m. on April 21, 2025.
American Experiment encourages respectful comments to PELSB requesting the board to restrain its identitarian turn and remove this ideologically-driven licensure pathway from its proposed rule drafts.
Additionally, requiring a special license for this topic is unnecessary, as it is redundant to the social studies licensure, and given the flexibility that local schools have with what their ethnic studies course offering can cover, it is unrealistic to have a single license cover all options.
Written comments should reference Minnesota Rules 8710.4810, RD-4863 and be mailed to:
Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board
Attn: Steven Rollin, Rulemaking Specialist
1021 Bandana Blvd. E.
Suite 222
Saint Paul, MN 55108
Or emailed to:
CRYFO.ehyrf@fgngr.za.hf
If PELSB’s proposed licensure standards are approved by an administrative law judge and adopted, the anticipated effective date for the license pathway is July 1, 2026.
This article was originally published by the Center of the American Experiment.
Catrin Wigfall
Catrin Wigfall is a Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment.
Catrin’s experience in education and policy research began during her time with the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. Her interest in education policy led her to spend two years teaching 5th grade general education and 6th grade Latin in Arizona as a Teach for America corps member. She then used her classroom experience to transition back into education policy work at the California Policy Center before joining American Experiment in February 2017.
Catrin graduated summa cum laude from Azusa Pacific University in California, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.
