Palo Alto, a city associated with California’s association with technology, has recently decided to drop an honors biology class offered to freshmen. The same district just adopted an ethnic studies class for freshmen as a graduation requirement. The two decisions weren’t directly related and both have been in the works for several years, but it’s a pretty clear sign of things to come, at least here in California.
The decision to drop honors bio and combine it with regular biology for incoming freshmen is about “de-laning” which is another word for de-tracking.
The Palo Alto Unified School District is considering merging its biology and honors biology courses to create one “foundational” biology course, following other local districts that have made the move to eliminate some advanced classes.
While some students and parents worry the change could set advancing students back, teachers say creating one more comprehensive biology course will create a stronger foundation for all students to succeed in AP and honors classes.
The approach would “delane” Paly students in response to changing science standards and in an effort to encourage all students to pursue science at a high level in high school.
Palo Alto Unified’s science programs have been undergoing changes for over a decade, after California adopted the Next Generation Science Standards in 2013, which set out to create more modern courses based in reason and research rather than memorization, according to the National Science Teaching Association.
De-tracking in schools is an idea usually associated with equity. Tracking splits students into advanced and regular classes. The students in the advanced classes are more likely to be white or Asian. The students in the regular classes are more likely to be Hispanic or Black. The achievement gap between different races has been of great concern to teachers and administrators for decades and many critics saw the tracking system as partly responsible for that gap. The idea was that by de-tracking students and having them all together in one classroom, the slower students would be lifted up and perform better.
This is exactly what was behind the decision by San Francisco schools in 2014 to drop Algebra for 8th graders in an attempt to close the achievement gap and create greater equity. But that experiment was a failure. It did nothing to close the achievement gap but it did make it harder for advanced students to get through calculus by senior year. San Francisco eventually reversed course but unfortunately the same dumb idea was drafted into statewide math standards.
This particular change to honors bio in Palo Alto schools has been under serious consideration since 2018. That’s when money was allocated to create a new curriculum, but the class was delayed because of the pandemic. The first pilot of the new class happened in the 2022-23 school year.
Dropping honors bio means advanced students will lose an option to move ahead more quickly. However, the people pushing this shift claim that same approach will not be extended to other honors science classes.
In this case, teachers said they had a consensus that a single class would make the transition easier from 8th grade to 9th grade, when students are still learning what level is appropriate for them.
“We’re so excited to teach this course because it’s truly about the learning, and not about a label for honors or for a grade,” said Joshua Little, a science teacher at Gunn High School…
They don’t want to make changes to honors chemistry or physics, said Liz Brimhall, who has taught science at Palo Alto High School since 1997.
“We really want to give all students a really strong foundation and springboard so they can access our various science pathways, including honors,” Brimhall told the board.
At the same time the school board was voting on this change to bio classes, they were also going back and forth on the inclusion of a new ethnic studies class for freshmen that is effectively an unfunded mandate by the state.
The Palo Alto school district went on an emotional roller-coaster ride over ethnic studies this past week. Administrators first rejected a state mandate to add the course as a graduation requirement — a win for critics of the class — and then days later a contentious five-hour public meeting ended with the school board pushing the mandate through.
The vote to officially add ethnic studies to the Peninsula district’s graduation requirements, starting with the fall’s freshman class, seemingly ends a bitter two-year battle over what topics the semester-long course should include. Palo Alto’s curriculum is already fully developed, which reflects the state’s model curriculum, and is considered inclusive, district officials said…
Critics, however, feared there were elements that would be considered more divisive, pitting racial groups against each other.
The critics in this case are of course correct. The curriculum for this course is all about teaching freshmen identity politics, intersectionality, systemic racism and ultimately activism. This is from the California model curriculum.
The Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum will focus on the traditional ethnic studies first established in California higher education, which has been characterized by four foundational disciplines: African American, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander studies.4 The focus on the experiences of these four disciplines provides an opportunity for students to learn of the histories, cultures, struggles, and contributions to American society of these historically marginalized peoples, which have often been untold in US history courses…
This model curriculum is a step toward rectifying omission of the experiences and cultures of communities within California. Ethnic studies courses address institutionalized systems of advantage and address the causes of racism and other forms of bigotry including, but not limited to, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, xenophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia within our culture and governmental policies. Educators can create and utilize lessons rooted in the four foundational disciplines alongside the sample key themes of (1) Identity, (2) History and Movement, (3) Systems of Power, and (4) Social Movements and Equity to make connections to the experiences of all students.
We’ve all seen how students marinating in grievance studies turn out. They become ignorant activists like the kids supporting Hamas and harassing Jewish students on college campuses over the past year.
So this is where things are headed in California. More DEI and intersectionality in public high schools and less advanced math and science which might highlight the awkward achievement gap. It’s almost like the state is trying to make this cartoon a reality.
Update: How the sausage gets made. This is the recent Palo Alto school board meeting about the ethnic studies course.
WATCH: PALO ALTO SCHOOL BOARD MEETING GANGS UP ON ASIAN SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER
At 2h 59 min -3h mark, Asian school board member says “she has not felt very safe” due to bullying by other woke school board members.
At 3h 50m mark, Palo Alto School Board member Danae Reynolds… pic.twitter.com/FTQwd976yc
— Asians Against Wokeness (@AZNsAgainstWoke) January 27, 2025
If you click on the video and watch for a few minutes, this is exactly how this class is going to work. Anyone deemed opressed under this curriculum will have carte blanche to say whatever they want about anyone deemed an oppressor. The reverse will not be true. The message to white, Jewish and ultimately to Asian kids will be that they need to either shut up or confess their sins. This is a terrible idea and will become a breeding ground for white identity politics.
