Ninth-grade ethnic studies helped students for years, Stanford researchers find

Friends:

To know why Ethnic Studies works, read these articles that explain why. I'm so glad that Dr. Eliza Epstein shared it with me and others while reminding us of our own struggle in Texas to advance Ethnic Studies citing, "'Never Without a Fight': How Texas Has Stood Up for Ethnic Studies, by Maribel Falcón.

Dr. Epstein also shares this in-depth, authoritative piece published by the National Education Association authored by leading scholar Dr. Christine Sleeter titled, What the Research Says About Ethnic Studies that is also great for the college classroom, together with works cited herein.

Why does it work? The short answer to this question is that all of these pieces collectively speak to the importance of a curriculum that not only fosters positive pro-social and communitarian values but as importantly, speaks to the situated experiences of the children and youth in the classroom.

The jury is in. Ethnic Studies changes lives and promotes college-going. The reason we have to struggle for it is therefore less about evidence than it is about politics. This is the story for quality, well-funded, and staffed Bilingual Education, too. Yet both offer such potential and richness to culture and society.

I remain encouraged by the ongoing activism around it.

This morning I read a Bible verse that says, "God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied." (Matthew 5:6)

Regardless of religion, faith, or creed, this is who we are in the Ethnic Studies struggle. We hunger and thirst for justice. We advocate for our children, youth, and communities. We care deeply about the future. This shouldn't even be a struggle to begin with. 

It's a lifelong quest that will most certainly continue until we are satisfied. In some sense, for those of us knee-deep into the movement, it already is. We love the work we do in our communities like we do at Academia Cuauhtli, our Saturday school in Austin, Texas, to offer a nurturing, culturally resonant pedagogy and vision for the future. At this school, we combine Ethnic Studies, Bilingual Education, and Indigenous pedagogy into a beautiful curriculum for elementary school youth that motivates and inspires. There needs to be more Academia Cuauhtlis in the world.

I've always said that someday, Ethnic Studies will just be called a "good education." Thanks, Dr. Epstein. I always appreciate a fresh reminder of why we do what we do.

-Angela Valenzuela


Ninth-grade ethnic studies helped students for years, Stanford researchers findSeptember 6, 2021

A new study shows that students assigned to an ethnic studies course had longer-term improvements in attendance and graduation rates.


A ninth-grade ethnic studies class has a remarkably prolonged and strong positive impact on students, increasing their overall engagement in school, probability of graduating and likelihood of enrolling in college, according to a new study of a curriculum offered at the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD).

A new Stanford study found that students assigned to an ethnic studies course had longer-term improvements in attendance and graduation rates. (Image credit: Getty Images)

The findings, which follow up on earlier research by two of the authors indicating short-term academic benefits of the course, appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 6.

The study provides “compelling and causally credible evidence on the power of this course to change students’ life trajectories,” said Thomas S. Dee, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

Dee co-authored the study with former GSE doctoral student Sade Bonilla, now an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emily K. Penner, an assistant professor at the University of California at Irvine and former postdoctoral researcher at the GSE.

Lasting gains

The study was done in collaboration with SFUSD as part of a research-practice partnership with the GSE that began in 2009. In 2010, SFUSD launched a pilot program in which students were automatically assigned to an ethnic studies course as their first-year social studies requirement if they had a GPA of 2.0 or less. About nine in 10 were Hispanic, Black or Asian.

In 2017, Dee and Penner published a study showing academic gains at the end of ninth grade (e.g., higher attendance, grade-point averages and credits) among students encouraged to take the course. The researchers weren’t sure the gains would last over time, as countless promising academic interventions fade quickly.

But this one stuck. For one thing, attendance improved: Students who participated in the course came to school more often during their remaining time in high school, for a total of one additional day of school every two weeks.

By their fourth year of high school, the students had also passed six more courses than a comparison group. More than 90 percent graduated within five years, versus 75 percent of their peers. They were also 15 percent more likely to enroll in college within six years. (At the time of the study, they were not yet old enough to graduate college.)

Parallels with psychological interventions

How could one class in ninth grade have such a large effect? While there are many theoretical perspectives on the academic impact of ethnic studies, Dee underscored its parallels with recent insights from social psychology. Targeted psychological interventions that promote a sense of belonging in school, affirm personal values and forewarn about stereotypes have all shown promise in improving student engagement and motivation.

Dee noted that ethnic studies share these features and resemble “an unusually sustained and intensive social-psychological intervention.”

In SFUSD’s ethnic studies class, for example, students examine the role that their ancestors played in history, getting into the experiences of groups that have been literally pushed to the margins of textbooks. They study, in-depth, discrimination against various groups of people based on their race, social group, ethnicity or country of origin.

“The biggest thing that happens in an ethnic studies course, I believe, is that students get to approach an academic course from the perspective of their own experience,” said Bill Sanderson, assistant superintendent of high schools at SFUSD. “Everything is approached in the course from the experience of the students.”

Though the principles of the class remain set, teachers tailor the content to the ethnic and racial communities at their school in order to “to bring relevant curriculum that these students can identify with,” Sanderson said.

Critiquing history cultivated students’ analytical abilities across classes, and the focus on anti-racism catalyzed their idealism. But the work of the course goes far deeper than that, the researchers said.

“There’s long-standing evidence that many historically underserved students experience school environments as unwelcoming, or even hostile,” said Dee. Those in this pilot, particularly, hadn’t done well academically and didn’t feel like they belonged. And ninth grade can be a nerve-wracking, transitional year.

Ethnic studies gave students “the opportunity to see their community reflected in the curriculum,” said Bonilla. Learning about their ancestors’ contributions made them feel proud and made school feel relevant, contributing to a sense of belonging. Learning about oppression and stereotypes in action reminded students that not every failure is an individual’s fault. Students conducted research projects out in the community and connected school with their lives.

Beyond ethnic studies

From there, once a student starts doing well, you’re “starting a stone rolling downhill,” Dee said, catalyzing greater motivation.

“There’s a basis in the science of learning for why courses like this can change students’ learning trajectories,” Dee said. “And if the mechanisms we’re describing are really valid, then this goes well beyond ethnic studies,” encouraging schools to make their teaching culturally relevant across subjects.

Education policymakers have focused recently on “curricula as the low-hanging fruit of education reform,” or something comparatively simple to change, Dee said.

Nevertheless, the results might not be easy to replicate. The district honed the curriculum over several years with faculty at San Francisco State University, home of the nation’s first ethnic studies college program. Many of the initial set of teachers had studied in that department and learned how to manage debate on sensitive subjects, Sanderson said.

Efforts to replicate this success without similar teacher supports and careful implementation are unlikely to be successful, Dee said, and may even trigger unintended and negative consequences. “Consider the potential educational and political fallout of asking teachers to discuss unusually sensitive topics in the classroom without the proper training to do so effectively.”

This is an especially pertinent consideration now, in the middle of a new wave of political controversy about history curriculum. While states and school districts are increasingly adopting requirements and standards for K-12 ethnic studies, some state legislatures are debating bills to ban the 1619 Project or critical race theory, a scholarly academic analysis of structural racism.

SFUSD, for one, isn’t going back. Its board voted this spring to make ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement.

“Ethnic studies is an important part of every young person’s education,” SFUSD board president Gabriela Lopez said in a statement issued by the district in March, which pointed to research showing the curriculum’s impact on GPA across disciplines, high school graduation rates, college-going rates and sense of belonging.


Media Contacts

Thomas S. Dee, Stanford Graduate School of Education: tdee@stanford.edu

Carrie Spector, Stanford Graduate School of Education: cspector@stanford.edu

This is a really good report by John Fensterwald in EdSource. Research evidence points strongly to the positive impact of Ethnic Studies curricula over the long term with respect to key outcomes about which we should care—when taught, of course, by well-prepared teachers. 

Although it most certainly is a movement unto itself, support for Ethnic Studies is evidence-based and shouldn't at all get caught up under today's "culture war" frame that opposes the teaching of Critical Race Theory. Why, when Ethnic studies is the antidote to to student alienation from school contexts that are often sterile, unfriendly, or even hostile to children of color? Why, when, as Stanford researcher Thomas Dee states, such classrooms create "spaces where they [students] feel a sense of belongingness and engagement?" The short answer is that with changing demographics, many leaders in power do not want to empower these youth with either the precious knowledge or uplift that ethnic studies classrooms provide.

Regardless of the intention behind those shrill voices making the case against Critical Race Theory—which is but one methodological orientation—among many utilized by our Ethnic Studies teachers, the benefits that accrue to ALL, including white, children merit mention. 

These courses simply make school more interesting because they speak to students' lived experiences while opening the creative door to personal or individual expression—and freedom of expression is everybody's inalienable right in a democracy.

Someday, I trust, what we know today as "Ethnic Studies" will simply be called "a good and virtuous education."

-Angela Valenzuela

Research finds ethnic studies in San Francisco had enduring impact

Ninth grade course engaged and motivated students who hadn't shown prior success in school 

by John Fensterwald | September 7, 2021 | EdSource.org

Research released Monday found that the benefits for San Francisco Unified students who took an ethnic studies course in ninth grade lasted throughout high school, resulting in higher attendance, higher graduation rates and increased enrollment in college, compared with similarly matched students who didn’t take the course.

The update of an often-cited 2017 study provides the first quantitative evidence of the longer-run academic impact of ethnic studies. Not only did the strikingly large benefits from the course not fade after ninth grade, but the course produced “compelling and causally credible evidence” of the power to “change learning trajectories” of the students targeted for the study — those with below-average grades in eighth grade, said Thomas Dee, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and co-author of the research.

Those historically underserved students “experience school environments as unwelcoming, or even hostile,” Dee said. The course appeared to succeed in changing their expectations at an important time, when students are deciding if they belong in high school. San Francisco Unified succeeded by engaging students “critically in an honest discussion of U.S. history and creating classroom spaces where they feel a sense of belongingness and engagement,” Dee said.

The peer-reviewed study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dee’s co-authors are Emily Penner, an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, and Sade Bonilla, a former Stanford Graduate School of Education doctoral student who is now an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Its publication coincides with a final vote later this week in the California Legislature on a bill that would require all students to take a semester course in ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement, starting with the class of 2030. High schools would have to start offering ethnic studies by 2025-26. Assembly Bill 101, authored by Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, is expected to pass easily. Gov. Gavin Newsom will have a month to decide whether to sign it.

Dee and the co-researchers caution, however, not to generalize the results of a study of 1,405 ninth-graders, only 13% of whom — about 180 students — took the ethnic studies course. The study was designed to measure the effect on at-risk students by comparing the results of students with grades of C or slightly below in eighth grade, who were assigned ethnic studies by default, to students with average grades of C or slightly above.

Whether the positive impact would apply to all students, especially those already thriving academically, is “an important, open question,” Dee said. Another caveat, the study noted, is that in San Francisco Unified, the ethnic studies course, developed over several years, was taught by well-trained teachers.

“It’s exciting because it’s a proof point about what this type of pedagogy can do for students, but the fact that it was a smaller-scale pilot should create some agnosticism about our capacity to replicate and scale this up,” Dee said.

The initial study, which measured the course’s impact on students in ninth grade, produced surprisingly positive results. Attendance of the students who took the course improved 21%; grade point average grew 1.4 out of 4 points, and credits earned improved 23 credits, out of 60 possible credits.

The impact continued throughout high school with impressive effects. The ethnic studies students’ graduation rates were 16 to 19 percentage points greater than similar students who didn’t take the course. Ethnic studies takers neared the district’s 220 credit requirement for graduation; the non-takers had 20 fewer credits. By between 10 and 16 percentage points, more ethnic studies takers enrolled in college within a year or two of graduation.

The demographics of students in the study and San Francisco Unified significantly differ from that of the state and the nation; 60% were Asian, 23% Latino, 6% Black and 5% white. Asian and Latino students showed significant gains in graduation; the numbers of white and Black students in the study were too small for reliable comparisons, the study said.

San Francisco Unified was one of the first districts to develop an ethnic studies curriculum; the study covered students who took the course between 2011-12 and 2013-14.

The state’s model ethnic studies curriculum, approved in March after two years, with multiple drafts and heated debates over what it should include, is optional; districts can pick and choose elements they like — or choose none of them. Assembly Bill 101 would not prescribe the content, although a district must offer a course that the University of California approved as meeting A-G admission criteria.

In a letter to the State Board of Education in January, three dozen professors from across the nation argued there was insufficient evidence to support assertions in the proposed model curriculum that research had found extensive benefits from ethnic studies. The evidence was overstated or unfounded, it said, and should be removed from the document.

Most of the 10-page letter was directed at the writing of Christine Sleeter, an author and emerita professor at California State University, Monterey Bay, and a strong advocate of ethnic studies. But in a section about the San Francisco Unified study, the writers criticized Dee and Penner for not including low-performing students who declined to take the ethnic studies course in their comparison. They also said the authors had glided over data showing that taking ethnic studies did not lead to improvement of students with a higher or lower GPA than the students at the center of the study.

San Francisco course’s anti-racism focus

The study summarized the themes of San Francisco’s course as “social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes, and social movements led by people of color from U.S. history spanning the late eighteenth century until the 1970s.” It stressed ties to the Third World Liberation Front, the coalition of Black, Latino and Asian student groups whose 1968 strike at San Francisco State University led to the nation’s first ethnic studies courses. The learning objectives of the course included “student knowledge of and ability to combat racism and other forms of oppression, increased student commitment to social justice, and improvement of student pride in their own identities and communities.”

Districts outside the Bay Area might steer clear of the course that promotes activism, comes across as ideological and could alienate some parents, ethnic groups and students in the class.

The study itself draws no conclusion about whether the particular course content contributed to the positive results.

What’s more essential, Dee said, is “culturally relevant” instruction that motivates and engages students. “So it’s not clear to me those mediating mechanisms require really doctrinaire, inflammatory content,” he said.

“There’s something I found impoverishing about the public debate over ethnic studies and, more recently, critical race theory,” he said. “And it’s because it has a cultural war frame” instead of focusing on “what’s going on with teaching and learning and student motivation and engagement.”

To get more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource’s no-cost daily email on latest developments in education.

The results on college-level Ethnic Studies courses keep turning up positively in terms of their effects for outcomes like college graduation rates.  There is indeed a large and growing body of evidence showing that this isn't "culture wars" or "identity politics" at play, but evidence-based scholarship that should have implications for the university experience, particularly for an increasingly diverse society.

-Angela

The Benefits of Ethnic Studies Courses

San Francisco State University students graduate at higher rates when they pass ethnic studies courses, but not everyone agrees on what this means.

By 

Ashley A. Smith

July 9, 2018

Racial tensions and culture wars on many college campuses have often led some to propose that colleges add ethnic studies, while others have challenged the existence of these courses. Meanwhile, the data show that students in these classes at one university have improved or better outcomes than their peers.

New data from an evaluation of San Francisco State University's ethnic studies courses found that by passing just one class, students improved their overall performance across the campus.

The data compiled by the college's Division of Institutional Analytics found that ethnic studies majors in general graduate at a rate about 20 percentage points higher than non-ethnic studies majors. In 2010, ethnic studies majors had a six-year graduation rate of 77.3 percent, compared to a rate of 52.3 percent for nonmajors. SF State is unique in having the country's first and only freestanding college in ethnic studies.

6-Year Graduation Rates: Ethnic Studies vs. Non-Ethnic Studies Majors

The study also showed that students who enrolled in at least one ethnic studies class graduated at a higher rate than students who took no ethnic studies classes.

Six-year graduation rate by Ethnic Studies classes for non-Ethnic Studies majors, Students who enrolled but did not pass any Ethnic Studies classes graduated 20 percent lower than students who passed. 

Ken Monteiro, the acting director of the César Chávez Institute at the university and former dean of the ethnic studies college, said the data point in one direction: "We would suggest more ethnic studies classes."

There are several reasons why this effect in improved outcomes happens in ethnic studies over other majors, he said.

"Ethnic studies faculty members spend more time on advising and supplemental education than faculty in other areas," Monteiro said. "We partner and try to offer wraparound services. We teach them information that directly relates to them and then teach [students] how to relate the information to them even if it's not literally related. And third, we teach critical thinking strategies to show them they can look at things from a different perspective."

Many of the ethnic studies students are also in SF State's Metro Academies College Success Program, which has seen its own success in increasing completion rates. The Metro program combines student services with a curriculum that emphasizes social justice. At SF State, Metro students have a 60 percent six-year graduation rate compared to 53 percent for the university.

But Matt Malkan, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a member of the California Association of Scholars, which is skeptical of some ethnic studies programs, said correlation shouldn't be confused for causation. Majoring in ethnic studies is easier than other majors like physics, he said in an email.

"One would have to control for the relative difficulty of the major programs chosen by these students to make any serious evaluation of this," said John Ellis, a chair of the California Association of Scholars and professor emeritus of German literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Malkan said he also questions the effects reported at San Francisco State when completing an ethnic studies course is required to graduate. For example, students can satisfy U.S. history requirements for graduation by passing one of a number of courses offered from within the College of Ethnic Studies.

"Any graduation requirement is a clear signpost of progress toward degree completion," he said. "Students who complete that requirement are also showing themselves more likely to finish college, and in a shorter time, compared with those who have still not yet managed to get around to getting that requirement done successfully."

But Monteiro said ethnic studies also works to protect students from the emotional distress they may feel even within the classroom.

"They see our classes as an oasis where they're not attacked or harmed, and it's easier to learn when you're not feeling under attack," he said, adding that those attacks -- also known as stereotype or identity threat -- can happen in physics or calculus courses where one may assume identity doesn't play a role.

The idea is that if you're a historically underrepresented person in an education setting, then you experience anxiety in that academic setting. So a woman in an all-male high-level math course may underperform if she senses gender bias, even if that bias isn't overt or malicious, said Thomas Dee, a professor and director of Stanford University's Center for Education Policy Analysis.

SF State is a diverse campus where about 30 percent of undergraduates identify as Latino, 27 percent as Asian, 19 percent as white and 5 percent as black. But in a paper published last year, SF State professors found stereotype threat affected black students in psychology courses, where they were in the minority, as opposed to those black students who were enrolled in Africana studies, where they were the majority.

A similar effect of ethnic studies courses improving outcomes for students was found at the high school level two years ago by Dee and other researchers at Stanford's Graduate School of Education. The study examined an ethnic studies pilot program in San Francisco high schools and found students' attendance, grades and number of course credits for graduation increased and improved.

"There is an extensive literature base demonstrating the effects of ethnic studies in K-12 and higher education that goes back a couple of decades," said Nolan Cabrera, an associate professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. "Ethnic studies definitely need to expand. We're still exploring the underlying mechanisms, but the more students see themselves in the curriculum, the better they'll do. The more they see the relevance to their everyday lives, the more engaged they'll be, and that's what makes [ethnic studies] unique."

Despite the multiple studies that show the improvement students make when they take an ethnic studies course, the field continues to be under attack. Cabrera, for instance, has presented evidence defending the efficacy of Mexican-American studies in Arizona high schools, which led to a federal judge ruling that the law banning the courses was created and enforced with anti-Mexican-American hostility.

And two years ago the ethnic studies college at SF State was fighting to survive budget cuts.

"Either it doesn't exist or there are legislators trying to kill it and this data is not changing their minds," Monteiro said. "We say we're a fact-based society and evidence-based society, but we're trained to ignore facts if they don't help our agenda."

Dee said some of these same interventions used in ethnic studies, such as limiting stereotype threat and offering student support services, could apply in other fields to help students.

"This isn't just culture wars or identity politics," he said. "There's a sound theoretical foundation for why culturally relevant pedagogy can be effective."

Read more by 

Ashley A. Smith