DRAFT 1.0 • September 2026 • Audience: school boards, parents, policymakers
Compare: Minnesota rules vs. the Minnesota Learning Project
This page compares Minnesota’s current social studies and ethnic studies requirements with the Minnesota Learning Project’s proposed alternative. The Minnesota column summarizes standards now in effect for the 2026–27 school year and the statutory ethnic studies requirements. The MLP column describes a draft proposal, not adopted law.
Board packet note: This page is designed to print cleanly. For the widest table, print in landscape orientation.
| Requirement | Minnesota current requirements | Minnesota Learning Project proposal |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Minnesota’s social studies standards are statewide expectations governing K–12 instruction. MDE describes social studies as preparing inquisitive, informed, and engaged members of society for college, careers, and civic life. | Judge the system primarily by what students can demonstrably know and do: read, write, calculate, reason from evidence, understand history, geography, science and civic institutions, and manage adult life. |
| Identity | The ethnic studies strand requires students to analyze how power and language construct social identities including race, religion, geography, ethnicity, and gender, and to apply that understanding to their own identities and groups in Minnesota. | Students may study identity, culture, race, ethnicity, religion, sex, geography, migration and community as subjects of history and social analysis. Academic performance would depend on knowledge, evidence and reasoning rather than adoption of a prescribed identity framework. |
| Ways of Knowing & Methodologies | The ethnic studies strand includes a Ways of Knowing and Methodologies anchor directing students to use ethnic and Indigenous studies methods and sources to examine identity, systems, power, the roots of contemporary oppression, and lessons from the past in relation to present injustice. | Students would compare sources, methods, interpretations, and competing explanations. The state would define the knowledge and reasoning to demonstrate without requiring one political or ideological methodology as the statewide interpretive method. |
| Resistance and student action | The Resistance standard requires students to study how individuals and communities fought for freedom and liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power and to identify strategies associated with lasting change. | Students would study resistance movements, reform movements, political organizations, litigation, elections, protest, war, negotiation and institutional change as historical and civic subjects. They could evaluate strategies without being required to participate in a political activity for academic credit. |
| “Organize with others” | Minn. R. 3501.1350, subp. 6(B), states that the student will “organize with others to engage in activities that could further the rights and dignity of all.” | The MLP would remove compelled organizing from statewide academic mastery. Students could learn how groups organize and could voluntarily participate in civic activities, but a grade would not depend on organizing for a social or political objective. |
| Slavery, civil rights and treaties | The current standards include slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, civil rights struggles, Tribal sovereignty, treaties, treaty rights and Indigenous perspectives. These subjects remain part of Minnesota social studies. | Keep them. Teach slavery, abolition, Reconstruction, segregation, the civil rights movement, treaties, Tribal sovereignty, Indigenous history and the consequences of government policy accurately, chronologically and at developmentally appropriate depth. The proposal does not treat honest history as optional. |
| Geography | Minnesota has a dedicated geography strand, including geospatial skills and inquiry, places and regions, human systems, human-environment interaction and movement. | Increase the practical geographic core: maps, physical geography, Minnesota and U.S. regions, world regions, resources, migration, transportation, political boundaries and the geographic context needed to understand history and current events. |
| How government actually works | The citizenship and government strand includes democratic values, rights and responsibilities, governmental institutions, political processes, public policy and Tribal Nations. It requires study of local, state, federal and Tribal governmental structures and processes. | Make civic mechanics a central requirement: which level of government has authority, how laws and ordinances are made, courts, elections, school boards, cities, counties, townships, agencies, budgets, taxation, zoning, public records, public meetings and how a resident actually navigates these institutions. |
| What students must produce | Current standards require more than factual recall. Students analyze sources, build arguments, participate in civil discourse, identify roots of contemporary issues, design plans to address issues and, in the ethnic studies Resistance standard, organize with others. | Students would produce evidence-based explanations, arguments, maps, research, quantitative analyses, historical timelines, policy comparisons and demonstrations of civic knowledge. Assessment would focus on the quality of knowledge, evidence, reasoning and execution—not agreement with a required political conclusion or participation method. |
| State/local balance | State standards and benchmarks establish required student learning. Beginning in 2026–27, high schools must offer an ethnic studies course; elementary and middle schools must provide ethnic studies instruction by 2027–28 in accordance with state standards. | The state would specify measurable competencies. Districts and communities would choose most curriculum, texts, examples, sequencing and instructional methods, subject to those mastery requirements and ordinary legal protections. |
The disagreement in plain words
Teaching honest history is not the fight. The fight is whether students must use one political method and organize as part of the grade.
The Minnesota Learning Project would continue teaching slavery, civil rights, treaties, Tribal sovereignty, racism, discrimination and reform movements. Its objection is narrower: statewide standards should define knowledge and reasoning students must demonstrate without requiring students to adopt a prescribed political methodology or participate in organizing as an academic outcome.
Primary sources
- Minnesota Rule 3501.1350 — Academic Standards for Social Studies
- Minnesota Statutes §120B.251 — Ethnic Studies Requirements
- Minnesota Statutes Chapter 120B, including §120B.25 definition of ethnic studies
- Minnesota Department of Education — Social Studies Standards
This comparison is explanatory. For the Minnesota Learning Project’s canonical proposed language, see Policy Standards. For transition concepts, see Implementation.
