The studies actually claimed that an ethnic studies course raises a student’s GPA.
From Tablet Mag:
Studies Fail to Support Claims of New California Ethnic Studies RequirementLast fall, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a measure that could require every California public high school student to take an “ethnic studies” course to graduate, he alluded to two studies commonly cited by advocates to justify the measure, claiming the research shows that ethnic studies courses “boost student achievement over the long run—especially among students of color.”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. Nevertheless, a proposal to make ethnic studies a prerequisite for admission to the University of California—currently before the UC Academic Senate—uses the results of both the 2017 and 2021 studies to claim that “by requiring all future UC applicants to take an ethnic studies course, UC can uplift the outcomes of students of color.”Social science research often generates controversial results, because particular findings can often be legitimately interpreted in multiple ways. This is not the case here. There are well-established, objective methods for evaluating the effects of new programs, and reporting upon and interpreting the results of those evaluations. Those methods were not followed in the Dee-Penner-Bonilla research. The work they present fails many basic tests of scientific method, and it should not have been published as written, much less relied upon in the formulation of public policy.
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