Statistics Used by California to Justify Ethnic Studies Requirement Exposed as Flawed

Joel B. PollakMarch 29, 2022

A pair of studies used by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and fellow Democrats last year to justify legislation requiring high school students across the state to complete an “ethnic studies” curriculum have been exposed as inconclusive at best.

According to a news release, analysis by statisticians Richard Sander of the University of California Los Angeles and Abraham Wyner of the University of Pennsylvania revealed ” that the beneficial claims [for ethnic studies] are wholly unsupported by the evidence. The data, they say, could just as easily be argued to show a harmful effect from the course as a
beneficial effect – but the soundest scientific conclusion is that the two original studies show nothing at all.”

The ethnic studies curriculum generated a great deal of controversy, including over claims of antisemitism, and reports that the curriculum suggested students learn about radical left-wing Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Gov. Newsom claimed last year, in signing Assembly Bill 101 to mandate the ethnic studies curriculum, that “a number of studies have shown that these courses boost student achievement over the long run — especially among students of color.”

But as Sander and Wyner reported in the online Tablet magazine Monday, the “studies” to which he referred did not show that at all (original emphasis):

The studies—one from 2017 by Thomas Dee of Stanford University and Emily Penner of University of California, Irvine, the other a follow-up from 2021 by Dee, Penner, and Sade Bonilla of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst—purport to show that ninth-grade students who took an ethnic studies course in San Francisco public schools experienced dramatic short-term and long-term academic benefits. The studies also make the stunning claim that the ethnic studies course causes an average increase of 1.4 GPA points, miraculously turning C students into B+ students.

But the experiment on which these conclusions are based is so muddled, and the data reported is so ambiguous, that in fact they support no conclusion, either positive or negative, about the effects of this particular ethnic studies course in these particular schools and times. Indeed, not even the lead author claims that the studies provide a basis for establishing ethnic studies mandates for all students.

Sander and Wyner point out several specific problems with the studies’ methodology, such as failing to distinguish between students who were eligible to enroll in an experimental ethnic studies courses, and those who actually chose to do so. They add that the authors of the studies have declined to share their raw data. They also note that the studies are being used to support an ethnic studies requirement at University of California campuses.

In their press release, they conclude that “the publication of these two astoundingly shoddy works and their importance to the ethnic studies movement should raise the alarm – not only that the editing and peer-review process at [the two journals that published the articles] needs overhauling, but that California parents are not being told the truth about a potentially significant change in the education of their children.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.