Cultural Relevance at Scale: The Effects of Districtwide Ethnic Studies Expansion

• In Event: Student Experiences and Benefits of Taking Ethnic Studies: Lessons From Three School Districts

Abstract

Theoretical Framework and Purpose
Concerns about persistent gaps in student outcomes and unequal access to high-quality education have been documented for decades (Matheny et al., 2022). One prominent example of curricula addressing these concerns is Ethnic Studies (ES) courses, which have expanded rapidly in the last decade. ES courses center the experiences and histories of communities of color to nurture students’ racial/ethnic and social identities. Recently, the state of California mandated ES as a graduation requirement, starting with the class of 2030. During the 2020-21 school year, approximately 50 percent of all California public high school students attended a school that offered ES (Penner & Ma, 2021).

The Oeste Unified School District (Oeste) was an early adopter of high school ES, and its initial program was considered successful. However, promising evidence from Oeste and elsewhere (Cabrera et al., 2014), does not guarantee that ES effectiveness persists as it expands. This study provides novel evidence of the causal impacts of district wide adoption of ES on students’ outcomes and details district efforts to support its growth.

Data and Methods
This paper investigates the impact of expanding the ES curriculum using student-level administrative data from Oeste. Our primary estimation strategy is a student-fixed effects design that controls for constant observed and unobserved student characteristics over time. We complement this analysis with description of ES program expansion and teacher and student focus groups to understand how ES shapes student outcomes.
Preliminary Findings and Implications

Since the inception of the official ES pilot in 2010-11, enrollment in ES courses quadrupled, even as total high school enrollment in Oeste remained relatively constant at approximately 16,000 students annually. Initially, in the 2010-11 school year, only about 3.5 percent of all high school students were enrolled in ES courses. However, by the 2022-23 school year, this enrollment rate had increased to 13.4 percent.

Preliminary results indicate that ES enrollment increased students’ overall annual GPA (exclusive of ES and P.E. courses) and reduced the likelihood of course failures for students enrolling in any high school grade. In the year immediately following ES enrollment, overall GPA increases by 0.15 to 0.25 points and the likelihood of failing any course decreases by almost 6 to 10 percentage points. Notably, these positive effects persisted throughout each year of high school following course enrollment. GPA gains and reductions in course failures were more pronounced among students with lower eighth grade GPAs, male students, Black and Hispanic students, and special education students. While the magnitude of these effects varied, they were positive and statistically significant for all student subgroups. Our findings are robust to potential violations of the parallel trends assumption and different sample restrictions. Our results suggest that well-implemented ES coursework can be provided at scale and has the potential to address disparities in student outcomes.

Authors

• Biraj Bisht, University of California - Irvine

• Sade Bonilla, University of Pennsylvania

• Grace Ha Eun Kim, University of California - Los Angeles

• Emily K. Penner, University of California - Irvine