What is the Ethnic Studies for All Initiative?

A growing body of research from education scholars shows that an Ethnic Studies pedagogy taught at the K-12 level exposes students to an empowering and academically rigorous curriculum. This curriculum has proven to have positive academic and social benefits to students of all races and ethnicities.

Ethnic Studies incorporates culturally relevant, social justice, community responsive and other pedagogical approaches with a focus on literacy and critical thinking skills. Ethnic Studies has a 50 year history in the United States with high school students in East LA demanding Mexican-American studies in their schools in 1968 and college students in that same year creating the first college Ethnic Studies programs at San Francisco State University.

Recently school districts across the state of California, Texas, Arizona, and other cities and states have been expanding K-12 Ethnic Studies programs because community members are demanding these studies be a part of their educational experience. California has incorporated Ethnic Studies into the new Social Studies Framework and the state has established a model Ethnic Studies curricuum. In October 2021, Gavin Newsom signed California Assembly Bill 101 into law, requiring California high school students to take Ethnic Studies to graduate, starting with the class of 2030. Camino Nuevo Charter Academy is leading the effort in California for charter school networks to also create Ethnic Studies programs for students at all grade levels TK-12 that are driven by teachers and community leaders.

The Ethnic Studies For All Initiative at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy is grounded in four key pillars: decolonial, anti-racist, culturally responsive, and community responsive pedagogies. With these pillars and within Teaching For Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards and Anti-Bias framework, a cross-campus Ethnic Studies Task Force, participating and administrators from 6 CNCA campuses have collaborated engaged in professional development led by expert scholars. The participating teachers have created Ethnic Studies units and lessons in their classrooms that have been compiled so that they are available for all CNCA teachers. One such project was in collaboration with UC Irvine’s History and Geography Project to create the first ever Central American Studies focused curriculum developed with our unique student population in mind, that is now published and free to use by teachers and students across the country.

For more information about the research showing the effectiveness of Ethnic Studies please see the following links:

1. Dr. Christine Sleeter’s article, “The Academic and Social Values of Ethnic Studies: A Research Review” documents the success of different Ethnic Studies program across the country.

2. Stanford recently released an extensive quantitative and qualitative study of San Francisco Unified School District’s Ethnic Studies Program which is showing positive academic results for all students.  

3. Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales’ article, “Toward an Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: Implications for K-12 Schools from the Research”
4. Teaching Tolerance “Social Justice Standards: The Teaching Tolerance Anti-Bias Framework”  a road map for anti-bias education at every grade level - tolerance.org

For more information about the Ethnic Studies For All Initiative at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy please reach out to Jacob Abriel at [email protected].