Precarious Possibilities: One School District’s Effort to Institutionalize Critical Ethnic Studies

• In Event: The Institutionalization of K-12 Ethnic Studies: Implementing Innovative Curricula across Diverse Social and Political Contexts

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
In the mid-2010s, a small group of public middle school teachers at a public middle school in the Northeast New England collaborated with community partners to co-create an ethnic studies curriculum inspired by those in Tucson and San Francisco (Cabrera et al, 2014; Dee & Penner, 2017). In this community-engaged ethnography, we chronicle how their efforts grew into a district-wide ethnic studies program serving 1,000 students per year at two high schools and five middle schools. In addition to modeling what critical ethnic studies can look like in public schools, we ethnographically illustrate relational practices, systemic challenges, and inherent contradictions of institutionalizing ethnic studies.

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework
We draw from Ferguson’s (2012) work on the institutionalization of ethnic studies, which frames it as a process driven by “a simultaneous estrangement from and appeal to institutional power” (p. 16). Informed by this framework, we view ethnic studies classrooms as inherently contradictory spaces that are positioned both inside and against the institution of K12 schooling. While they can be spaces of humanizing, liberatory, culturally-sustaining pedagogy (e.g, Sleeter & Zavala, 2020; Tintiangco-Cubales and Duncan-Andrade, 2021), some struggle to live up to expectations due to insufficient resources, difficulty retaining effective teachers, politicized curricular debates, or “whitewashing” of the curriculum (e.g. Cabrera, 2019; Chang, 2022; Fernandez, 2019; Valenzuela, 2019).

Methods & Data Sources
We partnered with and conducted ethnographic research on a district-wide ethnic studies program continuously from 2018-2023. Data sources include participant-observation in classes, schools, professional development sessions, and community events; semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, and community partners; collection of artifacts including curriculum, lesson plans, local media coverage, and policy documents; and recorded (publicly-available) school board meetings.

Findings & Arguments
In our findings, we trace the program’s bottom-up creation, practices, impacts, and eventual (partial) dismantling. More than just a series of courses, we describe it as a model because its curriculum, pedagogy, operations, and governance embodied the ethnic studies “hallmarks” (Sleeter & Zavala, 2020). While school and district administrators generally supported the idea of ethnic studies and the academic aspects of the curriculum, they pushed back against its critical and activist dimensions. Additionally, the structural conditions of schooling, normalized operating procedures, and a prevailing neoliberal multiculturalism “colorblind” discourse undermined the program, putting it in a constant state of vulnerability to cuts, co-optation, and whitewashing. To (attempt to) sustain its more critical, community-responsive aspects, educators and their allies employed grassroots community-organizing tactics. Despite a year-long sustained struggle, they did not succeed in warding off drastic program cuts. We ethnographically illustrate the overt and covert ways in which the program was undermined and neutralized, and status-quo schooling reproduced.

Scholarly Significance
As communities of color continue to fight for ethnic studies in education, we need models that show what these programs can look like in various contexts when implemented with integrity to the field’s theoretical roots and aims. This paper provides one such model in rich ethnographic detail. By documenting systemic challenges, we help practitioners anticipate and navigate them while contributing theoretical insights on social reproduction and change.

Authors

• Kysa Nygreen, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Joel A. Arce, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Dana Altshuler, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Keisha L. Green, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Laura A. Valdiviezo, University of Massachusetts - Amherst