What Is Ethnic Studies, and Which Version Did You Get?

Ask a school what ethnic studies is and you will get a definition. Ask two schools and you will get two.

Neither school is dodging you. That is just how the thing was built. California spent five years building a model curriculum for the subject, roughly 900 pages of it (Orange County Department of Education), and then said plainly that no district has to use it (California Department of Education).

Which means the course your child sits in for a semester got written a lot closer to home than that, by people whose names appear on a meeting agenda you could have attended.

Which makes the useful question a much narrower one than the argument you have been handed: not whether ethnic studies is good or bad, but which version landed in your child's schedule. That one has a paper answer.

The short answer#

Ethnic studies is the study of the history and experience of America's ethnic communities, traditionally four: African American, Chicano and Latino, Asian American, and Native American. That subject is real, serious, and older than most of the people arguing about it.

The trouble is a second version that keeps the name and swaps the job: from teaching your child what happened to teaching your child what to conclude. Same title, same credit, same line on the transcript.

Ethnic studies is one course name covering two very different courses, and only the syllabus tells you which one your child got.

What this guide covers#

• Where the course actually came from
• The version that works, and the fine print nobody reads aloud
• The second version, in its own words
• How to tell which one your district bought
• What you are actually allowed to ask for
• The parent who actually read it
• Frequently asked questions

Where the course actually came from#

Start with the part that is not in dispute. In 1968 and 1969, students at San Francisco State walked out for six months and won the country's first College of Ethnic Studies, organized around four departments: American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Black Studies, and La Raza Studies (San Francisco State University).

Whatever you think of that strike, it produced a genuine academic field. Decades of scholarship followed, most of it about people your child's American history textbook mentions in a sidebar or not at all.

The K-12 version is much newer, and that is where the trouble lives. A college elective taken by a nineteen-year-old who chose it is a different object from a required semester handed to every sophomore in a district. Scale changes what a course has to be, and it changes who writes it.

The version that works, and the fine print nobody reads aloud#

Here is the case for ethnic studies at its strongest, and it is stronger than most parents have been told.

In 2010, San Francisco Unified began assigning struggling ninth graders to an ethnic studies course. Stanford researchers followed them, and the results came back loud: more than 90 percent graduated within five years against 75 percent of a comparison group, and they were 15 percent more likely to enroll in college (Stanford Graduate School of Education). The first-year effects were larger still, with attendance up 21 percentage points and grade point average up 1.4 (Stanford Graduate School of Education).

That is a real finding in a real journal, and it deserves better than the hand-wave it usually gets from my side of this argument (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Then there is the fine print. The study followed 1,405 ninth graders across three high schools in one district, and it works by comparing students who landed just either side of a 2.0 grade point average line, because that line was what put a child in the class. Only 8.3 percent of the sample fell below it, which makes the finding precise about students at the threshold and quiet about everyone else.

The course itself was also not a packet somebody bought. It had been built over years with San Francisco State's own ethnic studies faculty, and many of the first teachers had trained in that department.

Thomas Dee, the Stanford professor who ran that study, has been unusually blunt about what it does and does not prove. He warns that copying the course without the same teacher training is "unlikely to be successful" and "may even trigger unintended and negative consequences" (Stanford Graduate School of Education).

He also calls himself agnostic on making it a graduation requirement, and sums up the rush to scale it this way: it "may at some level snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" (Education Next).

Worth sitting with: the study every advocate cites at every board meeting comes with a warning label written by its own author. Nobody reads that part out loud, because it is the part that says the result belongs to a specific course taught by specific people, and not to the words on a course catalog.

The second version, in its own words#

Follow the incentives and you can see the split coming, because one road to a classroom is a great deal shorter than the other.

California ordered a state model curriculum in 2016. The first draft came back in 2019 and was rejected, and not by conservatives. The state board president called it short of the mark and in need of substantial redesign; the Los Angeles Times editorial board called it an "impenetrable mélange of academic jargon and politically correct pronouncements"; of roughly 57,000 public comments, more than 30,000 concerned the draft's treatment of Jews and antisemitism (Education Next).

Then Governor Gavin Newsom, who supports ethnic studies and had already signed a version of it into law for the state university system, vetoed the high school mandate over that same draft. His words: the initial draft "was insufficiently balanced and inclusive and needed to be substantially amended" (Office of the Governor).

Hold onto that. The strongest critics of the first draft were the people running California.

So some of the people who authored that rejected draft regrouped as the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, formed in protest of the rejection, and started selling their version straight to districts (EdSource). That is the incentive doing the work.

A state board is a five-year fight, 57,000 public comments, and a governor with a veto pen. A school board is a Tuesday night, an agenda item near the end, and whoever showed up. If your curriculum cannot survive the first process, the second one is right there.

You do not have to take anyone's characterization of what they teach, because they publish it themselves. Their framework asks students to "critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism," and to "challenge imperialist/colonial hegemonic beliefs and practices on the ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized levels" (Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium).

The stated purpose of the coursework, in their own vision statement, includes "community activist scholarship."

Somewhere between the Bracero Program and anthropocentrism, a history course became a worldview with a reading list. By one count that version has been adopted in at least two dozen California districts (EdSource).

Be fair about the other side of this, because a sloppy accusation is worth less than an accurate one. The consortium denies that its work is bigoted, and in 2024 a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against it and the Los Angeles teachers union, writing that "it is far from clear that learning about Israel and Palestine or encountering teaching materials with which one disagrees constitutes an injury" (EdSource).

The consortium called that ruling a vindication, and the plaintiffs said they would appeal. Take the honest lesson from it either way: a court is not going to read the syllabus for you.

How to tell which one your district bought#

You will not settle this by arguing about the phrase at a board meeting, and you will not settle it by asking a principal whether the school teaches anything divisive. Nobody has ever answered yes.

You settle it with paperwork, and it is less work than it sounds.

Three of those four are quick. Board agendas are already posted publicly, the syllabus is an email to the teacher, and the assignment is in your child's backpack. Only the approved course outline sometimes needs a formal records request, which runs on a clock measured in days or weeks depending on your state.

Once you have them, the comparison is fast. A course description is written to be agreed with. The assignment is written to be completed, which makes it the honest one.

Vocabulary helps too, as a first pass and nothing more. None of the phrases below is a slur, several are ordinary academic terms, and finding one proves nothing, but they come from a specific tradition and they tell you which shelf the course was pulled from. Every one of them appears in the consortium's own published framework.

Ten phrases, and what they mean in plain English#

1. Liberated ethnic studies. The brand name of the version built outside the state process.
2. Critique empire. Not study it, weigh it, or argue about it. Critique it, as the point of the assignment.
3. Cisheteropatriarchy. One word bundling sex, gender, and the family into a single system to be opposed.
4. Hegemonic. Whatever is currently normal, reframed as something imposed and due for challenge.
5. Counter-narrative. The story your child is expected to produce in place of the one in the textbook.
6. Ideological, institutional, interpersonal, internalized. The four levels a student is taught to locate oppression on, the last of which is inside themselves.
7. Transformative resistance. Activism, promoted to a learning outcome.
8. Community activist scholarship. The stated purpose of the coursework, per the consortium's vision statement.
9. Post-imperial. The future students are asked to imagine and help build.
10. Radical healing. Therapeutic language wrapped around a political program.

One of these in a syllabus means a teacher went to graduate school. Six of them means somebody chose a curriculum.

What you are actually allowed to ask for#

The suit that challenged a liberated ethnic studies curriculum on its content was thrown out, as you read above. The one that worked went after the process instead.

A coalition sued Santa Ana Unified over California's open meeting law, arguing the district had approved its courses out of public view. Then discovery opened the district's own files, and the sealed room turned out to be the point.

Committee officials had floated scheduling course approvals on Jewish holidays, so the community most likely to object would be least able to show up. The phrase "Jewish Question" appeared on a committee agenda. Jewish staff inside the district had complained about what they called "thinly veiled antisemitism" (American Jewish Committee).

The district settled. Three ethnic studies courses came off the schedule until they could be redesigned with real public input, though one was allowed to finish the school year once the antisemitic content came out.

The committee that wrote them was permanently disbanded, and the district bound itself to its own board policy on controversial issues.

Look at what the winning claim actually had to prove. Only that the public was kept out of the room. Every content change in that settlement followed from establishing it.

The lever, in one line: you are unlikely to win an argument about what a course means. You are far more likely to win one about whether the public was allowed to see it before the vote.

There is a content standard too, and most parents have never been shown it. California's own adopted model curriculum states that "in K-12 education it is imperative that students are exposed to multiple perspectives and taught to think critically and form their own opinions," that materials should carry "a balance of topics, authors, and concepts," and that lessons should be structured so students "come to their own conclusions" (California Department of Education).

State law goes further. Ethnic studies curriculum and materials must "be appropriate for use with pupils of all races, religions, nationalities, genders, sexual orientations, and diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds," must "not reflect or promote, directly or indirectly, any bias, bigotry, or discrimination," and must "not teach or promote religious doctrine" (California Education Code 51225.3).

The same section states the Legislature's intent that districts "not use the portions of the draft model curriculum that were not adopted" over concerns about bias and bigotry. That is the state telling districts, in statute, to leave the rejected draft alone.

Outside California, the equivalent lever is usually your district's own board policy on controversial issues, which almost always promises balance, impartial presentation, and no advocacy by staff. Districts write those policies themselves, which makes them awkward to disown.

Quarantined, because it changes: California's ethnic studies graduation requirement and course-offering mandate were written to take effect only if the Legislature funds them, and that funding has not arrived, which leaves both provisions on hold (Orange County Department of Education). Districts have adopted courses locally anyway. Check your own district's status before you assume either way.

The parent who actually read it#

Elina Kaplan emigrated from the former Soviet Union and describes herself as a Democrat (The Forward). She also did the exact thing this guide is asking of you, at a point when almost nobody had: she sat down and read the state's draft curriculum.

She recognized it immediately. "All of a sudden, I was reading the same concepts and language, in English this time, in the guiding principles of the California Ethnic Studies model curriculum," she said (Washington Examiner).

Then she did the unusual part. Rather than assemble a list of objections, she co-founded the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies, which published a competing standard.

It asks for curricula that "elevate ethnic groups, their backgrounds, and contributions without denigrating others" and that "present a range of political perspectives and approaches to bringing about change, including strengths and weaknesses of each" (Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies).

You can hand that to a school board without apologizing for it.

Frequently asked questions#

Is ethnic studies just critical race theory with a new name?#

No, and saying so hands the other side an easy win. Ethnic studies is a real academic field with decades of scholarship behind it, and plenty of ethnic studies courses are ordinary, rigorous history. The overlap shows up in one particular strain of K-12 curriculum, which is worth naming precisely rather than smearing broadly.

My school says it uses the state model curriculum. Is that reassuring?#

Somewhat, and less than it sounds. The state's adopted version went through years of public comment and revision specifically to remove the material that got the first draft rejected. But it is a guide, not a course, and districts are free to write their own lessons on top of it.

Can I opt my child out?#

It depends on your state and district, and on whether the course is an elective, a local graduation requirement, or a state one. Ask the counseling office in writing what alternative course satisfies the same requirement. The answer is often more flexible than the first verbal reply suggests.

Is it wrong to teach students about racism and injustice?#

No, and a parent who says so will be dismissed, correctly. Your child should learn about slavery, Chinese exclusion, Japanese internment, and Jim Crow, in detail and without softening. The line is between teaching what happened and trusting your child to weigh it, versus issuing the verdict before the reading starts.

The teacher seems great. Does the curriculum still matter?#

Yes, but a good teacher is worth a great deal, and the research suggests the teacher may matter more than the packet. The San Francisco result came from teachers who had spent years building the course. If your child has one of those, say so out loud to the principal.

What if I read the syllabus and it looks fine?#

Then it probably is, and you have just done something most parents never do. Tell the teacher you read it and liked it. A parent who can tell the good version from the counterfeit is far more persuasive later than one who objects to everything.

Isn't this a California problem?#

California is the loudest case, not the only one. At least eight other states have enacted measures requiring schools to offer some form of ethnic studies as an elective, and the "liberated" model is marketed district by district rather than state by state (Education Next).

The bottom line#

Go back to the two definitions you would get from two schools. Neither one was a lie. They were describing two different courses that happen to share a name, and the name is the only part anybody put to a vote.

So skip the argument about the phrase and go get the assignment. Everything else on the paper trail tells you what a course is supposed to be; the graded task tells you what your child has to hand in to pass, which is the only definition that ever reaches a teenager.

If your child is being taught what happened and asked to weigh it, you have the good version, and you should say so out loud. If your child is being handed the conclusion and graded on how well it is carried, you have the other one, and you did not vote for it. Either way, you will know by Friday, which is more than the people who approved it can say.