Lawmaker who led state to require ethnic studies in schools decries effort to undo it
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A Republican-led bill at the Minnesota Legislature seeks to erase Minnesota's ethnic studies standard for K-12 schools, which was set by law in 2023.
The additional requirement, which school districts must implement by the 2026-2027 academic year, was intended to teach students more about their and others’ cultures and histories, according to the law text. Students would be able to fulfill the requirement by taking an elective credit or a class that embeds ethnic studies into the curriculum.
Little Falls Republican Rep. Ron Kresha wants to strike those requirements from state law, arguing that as student scores for reading, math and other core classes continue to drop, more time should be spent on fundamentals in the classroom.
“Every student starts the day with a finite number of minutes to be successful. Mandates like the ethnic studies mandate steal time from students with prescribed, enforced curriculum, and ultimately sets them up to fail,” Kresha testified at a House Education Policy Committee hearing on Tuesday. “The ethnic studies mandate suggests we as a state do not trust the expertise of our teachers.”
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Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura, DFL-Minneapolis, authored the bill that set ethnic studies standards. She joined Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer on Wednesday in response to Kresha’s legislation.
“I think that we are seeing the Minnesota GOP kind of take a page from what we see the Trump administration doing federally, right? Which is trying to roll back progress and really trying to limit, you know, what can be taught in our classrooms,” Sencer-Mura said.
“Ethnic studies is about honesty, right? It’s about honest education that all students deserve. All students deserve to see themselves and their classmates and diverse histories represented in the classroom and all students deserve to understand the honest history of our country.”
Sencer-Mura is a fourth-generation Japanese American. Her grandparents were sent to internment camps with other Japanese Americans during World War II. She said she didn’t see that part of history reflected in her own high school experience; that, along with taking an eye-opening Asian American studies class in college, prompted her to advocate for an ethnic studies requirement.
“Learning that history helped me kind of understand myself, understand my family better, and understand, you know, our story is part of a larger history in America,” Sencer-Mura explained.
“All students want that. We heard a student in committee [Tuesday] say that ethnic studies education gave her back something that was taken from her, right? And that was certainly my experience with ethnic studies, and that's the experience that I want all students in Minnesota to have.”
Katherine Kersten, a senior policy fellow at the conservative Center of the American Experiment, testified in support of Kresha’s bill on Tuesday.
“From the beginning, [the Minnesota Department of Education] and bill authors knowingly gave power to design and lead the new ethnic studies regime to political advocacy groups that intend to remake our schools and our state by replacing academic instruction with K-12 education centered on activism, resistance and race and power analysis, starting in kindergarten,” Kersten said.
In a statement, Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope, who serves as co-chair of the House Legislative People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) Caucus, shared his concern about repealing the requirement.
“To seek the removal of ethnic studies, particularly during Black History Month, is to suggest we fear our own reflection in history's mirror,” Frazier wrote.
“In Minnesota, where our classrooms increasingly reflect the rich diversity of our state, removing ethnic studies moves us backward, not forward… Limiting this knowledge doesn't protect our students — it puts them at a disadvantage in an increasingly diverse world and workplace. Knowledge is not a threat to unity; it is the foundation of understanding that brings us closer together.”
Kresha’s bill advanced on a party-line vote to the House Education Finance Committee, although it’s not likely to pass the Minnesota Senate, which maintains a DFL majority.
Listen to Sencer-Mura’s full interview with Wurzer by clicking the player button.
