On day eight of the school year, Casey Ramirez’s ninth-grade Ethnic Studies class quietly discussed in pairs the parts of their identity they especially valued, that they would stand up and advocate for.
Eager, newly-minted high-schoolers looked on as Ramirez interspersed light-hearted personal examples in a lesson on how our identities shape how we see ourselves, how others see us and how we see the world.
It was a glimpse inside Ramirez’ Duarte Unified School District classroom, where she began the vital early work of building rapport and openness for the long semester ahead.
“It’s kind of difficult to get them to even talk in the beginning, because they don’t know each other,” Ramirez said. “And to do a lot of this work, there has to be trust in the room.”
The class is a milestone at the majority-Latino school district, which this fall has begun requiring the ethnic studies course for incoming ninth-graders to graduate, right on pace with California’s ethnic studies mandate’s original deadline.
But unlike Duarte, most California school districts are not in perfect alignment with the law, which after a much-vaunted push over several years, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed five years ago this October.
It calls for schools to offer ethnic studies by the 2025-26 school year and requires a semester-long course to graduate for the class of 2030 — entering high schools this year.
However, as it approaches its five-year anniversary, the law remains unfunded, setting up a rocky implementation landscape without state support, or enforcement.
From the Inland Empire to Los Angeles, some districts have offered coursework or required a class for years, like Los Angeles Unified or El Rancho Unified in Pico Rivera, the first in Southern California to do so. While still others stand in vehement opposition, bolstered by a Trump administration that came back to power in 2024 on a pledge to end diversity and equity policies that it saw as espousing activist political ideologies.
That opposition has led to lawsuits and ramped-up scrutiny on teachers, even as many students reported satisfaction with the coursework.
In line with the state law, Ramirez taught Duarte High School’s first ethnic studies course last school year, where students excavated local histories of Rocktown, a majority Black and Mexican American neighborhood in the San Gabriel Valley diminished by freeway construction and development.
The course, which got the ball rolling for this year, met with glowing reviews at the L.A. County school district.
“It wasn’t always smooth, and there were definitely days that I was crying in the car on the way home, but they worked so hard and they enjoyed it, to the point where they still pop by [and] want to come back and help,” Ramirez said.
Throughout Southern California, supporters and many students tout the ethnic studies courses’ early momentum, but there’s a caveat. They lament that as the nation’s political dynamics have changed, a critical window for that momentum to flourish may have closed, leaving the original vision of the law in limbo.
They see a program that they worry has been manipulated for political gain, diluted and curtailed.
And still, even where the requirement has been non-existent, educators are finding ways to adhere to the intent of the movement.
‘A window opened’
The modern interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies arose out of the 1960s Third World Liberation Front, a multiracial student strike at San Francisco State University protesting exclusionary admissions and curriculum, which led to the creation of the first college and departments of ethnic studies in the nation.
Ethnic studies and its related fields emphasize the marginalized histories and perspectives of Black, indigenous, and people of color in the United States, alongside the critique of race, colonization and other forms of oppression. Students often engage in real-world impact projects after studying historical and contemporary justice movements.
A growing pool of research identifies positive effects on myriad outcomes for students who take an ethnic studies course with a skilled instructor. Central to discourse on the state mandate is Thomas Dee and Emily Penner’s 2017 Stanford study on the ninth-grade ethnic studies pilot in San Francisco public schools. It found significant improvements in grade-point average, credits earned and attendance for at-risk students.
A years-long push for the first addition to California’s state-mandated high school graduation requirements since 1986 has been part of a wider effort to institutionalize ethnic studies in the state, where 80% of the K-12 public school population are students of color.
Riverside Supervisor Jose Medina authored the 2021 bill, and two former iterations, during his tenure as state assembly member.
A massive political force had emerged the year before, riding the wave of global Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of several high-profile police killings of Black people, most famously George Floyd in the United States.
“When [AB 101] passed, it was right after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and I say that there was a window that opened after,” Medina said. “There was a strong effort in education throughout the U.S. after that to look at what the curriculum was across the board. And many, many, people were saying that ethnic studies was very much necessary at that time.”
Lots of talk. No money
Because Medina’s new bill added new obligations on local educational agencies, it was deemed a “state-mandated local program,” which under California’s Constitution requires the state to reimburse school districts for the costs of the mandate.
It’s that contingency on state funding that has been a major factor in the mixed rollout of AB 101, leaders and local educators said.
At the time of the bill’s rollout, the state Senate’s Appropriations Committee estimated it would cost $276 million annually.
Outside of a one-time $50 million in the 2021-22 California budget to support districts’ rollouts, a spokesperson for the state board of education said “to date, no legislation has provided that appropriation” for AB 101.
“There was a lot of celebration of California taking this big step,” said Manuel Rustin, a history teacher at Pasadena’s John Muir High School, who chaired the Instructional Quality Commission of California’s Department of Education (CDE). The committee oversaw the state ethnic studies curriculum development.
But for Rustin and others who were on the ground floor of the curriculum, state leaders have not backed up the years of advocacy and work toward the curriculum with essential funding and support to make it a widespread reality years later.
“The saying the right thing, the having the press conferences, all the celebration stuff, folks love that,” Rustin said. “But the actual hard work of getting this into schools despite the pushback, despite the very misinformed narratives about it … just didn’t look like our leadership was ready to do that.”
Under California law, districts can choose whether to use the state model curriculum to develop their courses within guidelines.
The required course must use ethnic studies content as the primary content, though the department through which it is offered is flexible.
But districts such as Duarte have invested their own labor and resources to ensure the ethos of the course is carried out intentionally.
“The saying the right thing, the having the press conferences, all the celebration stuff, folks love that. But the actual hard work of getting this into schools despite the pushback, despite the very misinformed narratives about it … just didn’t look like our leadership was ready to do that.” — Manuel Rustin, history teacher
Major cities such as San Diego Unified (starting in the 2021 school year), Santa Ana Unified (starting in the 2022 school year), L.A. Unified (starting in the 2023 school year) and Riverside Unified (starting in the 2024 school year) now require ethnic studies to graduate.
Long Beach Unified, Glendale Unified and Arcadia Unified, like Duarte, are starting this year.
But not all of their county neighbors have been as quick to catch up.
“The state has not provided a timeline for when or if the requirement will be reinstated,” according to representatives from Torrance Unified School District, which has rolled out several “high-demand” ethnic studies courses since 2024.
Torrance expanded their ethnic studies offerings to all grade levels after “strong student engagement and positive feedback,” just stopping short of a requirement. These electives include Chicano Studies and Filipino-American Studies, where students can dive into transnational histories of immigration and generational dynamics, according to the website.
Likewise, Pasadena Unified and Irvine Unified have developed ethnic studies courses, but are still standing by official guidance before requiring the course.
Redlands Unified began its requirement this fall, district officials said in a letter to parents.
“Your student’s 9th-grade class will be the first cohort in California for whom this course is a mandatory graduation milestone,” Patti Buchmiller, assistant superintendent of educational services, wrote, noting that counselors would work with students to fit the class into their four-year plan. “This curriculum is designed to provide students with a deeper understanding of the diverse histories, cultures, and contributions of various groups within the United States.”
Backlash and backsteps
More broadly, the curriculum has had a rocky journey all along, even from its conception.
In those early years leading up to the requirement, a volunteer advisory committee, composed of college professors and high school teachers met for three, two-day sessions in the spring of 2019 to create a “model curriculum.” The guide included sample lessons, but it was meant as a resource for local educational agencies free to tailor their own courses.
Right off the bat, there was dissent, as various groups said the law lacked content standards and some lamented it had “no meaningful oversight.”
The first draft made available for public comment in the summer sparked public backlash from groups such as the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and the Israeli American Council over what they said was a lack of coverage of Jewish American history. They alleged antisemitic content, particularly in the lessons discussing Israel and Palestine.
Other groups also opposed the draft.
The state board of education gave the Instructional Quality Commission a significantly revised version of the curriculum draft, said Rustin.
Major changes to the curriculum included moving material on Arab American Studies, including any mention of Palestine, to the “Bridge,” meant as supplemental material outside the four foundational disciplines of African American Studies, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x Studies, Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies and Native American Studies.
In response, all 20 members of the advisory committee signed a letter to the Department of Education asking for their names to be taken off the revised curriculum. They denounced the commission’s actions, stating that “Ethnic Studies guiding principles, knowledge, frameworks, pedagogies, and community histories have been compromised due to political and media pressure.”
About half of the committee members started the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Coalition to continue offering resources for teaching what the group recently called “well-designed” ethnic studies programs.
It was a tumultuous start that continued with backlash and lawsuits on the local level, against the parallel backdrop of an anti-critical race theory, post-Floyd conservative reaction and reports of rising anti-semitism on college campuses.
Santa Ana Unified suspended three ethnic studies courses in the 2025-26 school year after settling a lawsuit from the Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League in September 2023 surrounding anti-Semitism and Brown Act open meeting violations.
The complaint stated that “the Unit on Arab/Muslim Americans was removed from the syllabus presented to the public” for a proposed English Ethnic Studies course, despite the website version retaining the section, “as a pattern of concealing potentially problematic material.”
“Since the settlement, the District has not revised its ethnic studies curriculum or proposed new course models,” a spokesperson for the district wrote in an email to the Southern California News Group.
The spokesperson said any future ethnic studies course development would have to move through the district’s standard course-approval process, which includes public input and approval by the Board of Education.
On Sept. 4, an appeals court reversed a judge’s decision to throw out a lawsuit from Concerned Jewish Parents and Teachers of Los Angeles that “contains a morass of largely irrelevant – and sometimes contradictory – allegations” against UTLA and Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium. The ruling allows the parent group to refile.
The complaint alleged LAUSD used an antisemitic curriculum from Liberated Ethnic Studies “including statements that the existence of the State of Israel is based on ethnic cleansing and land theft, apartheid and genocide,” and that “Zionism is distinct from Judaism.”
Placentia-Yorba Linda, Paso Robles, Ramona and Newport-Mesa districts passed measures restricting instruction relating to race in the years since 2020, while a Temecula Valley Unified resolution to ban “critical race theory” was blocked by an appeals court in May 2025.
Two expert witnesses in the appeal case, UC Riverside education professors Uma M. Jayakumar and Rita Kohli discussed how the resolution violated the California Teacher Performance Expectations educators are legally obligated to uphold. They also cited their 2023 national study of K-12 educators illustrating chilling effects of anti-CRT policies, where “over 90% of participants reported fear, self-censorship, or increased emotional stress.”
The additional scrutiny surveillance was certainly felt in Riverside County neighbor Corona-Norco Unified, where a supportive principal providing “extra funding to stock the ethnic studies library and create some extra lessons” was not enough to keep Vincent Chen teaching ethnic studies after the pilot year at his high school in Eastvale in 2022.
“There was a lot of scrutiny that came to teachers that were teaching it,” Chen said. “I would receive Freedom of Information Requests from nonprofits or interest groups, parents that would be against it, the sort of groups that would want to homeschool kids or not want kids to have certain histories. They would bug us as teachers and want us to give our syllabus and readings.”
Corona-Norco Unified began their ethnic studies graduation requirement this school year.
Chen recalled an Israeli Zionist group that questioned him on things he was teaching about Palestine. Often, he had to face the investigators on his own.
Similar opposition can be found in San Bernardino County’s Chino Valley Unified School District, which does not have an ethnic studies requirement, spokesperson for the district Andrea Johnston said in an Aug. 13 email.
Chino Valley Unified School District Board president Sonja Shaw said the topic of the curriculum had not been brought up with the board, but she opposed the requirement.
Education “should be rooted in academic excellence, not activism,” she said, echoing a frequent refrain among many conservative national leaders.
The curriculum being pushed across the state is a “divisive, politically driven ideology,” and rather than bringing students together it has created a divide at a time when many students are falling behind in reading, writing, and math, Shaw said.
In October 2025, California passed AB 715, which established an Office of Civil Rights and Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator to provide antisemitism education to school personnel and consult for preventing antisemitism in educational settings. Bill supporter American Jewish Committee states that the bill “enhances protections against biased instruction and materials in public schools, while creating new state oversight and support systems” on their website.
The bill was strongly opposed for contributing to the aforementioned chilling effects by groups such as the California Teachers Association, California School Boards Association and American Civil Liberties Union, as well as some Arab American and Jewish groups. Legislative efforts to clarify the bill’s language failed over the summer.
Newly-elected United Teachers of Los Angeles Vice President Jessica Rodarte highlighted a lawsuit this spring at LAUSD’s Downtown Business Magnet School, where an ethnic studies teacher was investigated under AB 715 for displaying various flags in their classroom, including a Black Lives Matter flag and a Palestinian flag.
State authorities issued directives for the district, which went on to ban the display of any flags other than the American flag in the school’s history classrooms and require pre-approval for new curricular materials, Rodarte said.
“I think the reason why AB 715 passed and our legislators didn’t think about the unintended consequences that will lead to censorship is because people don’t know what ethnic studies is; because they don’t know, it’s very easy to make accusations about the content,” said Rodarte, who also served as vice chair of the California Teachers Association civil rights and education committee.
Regardless of state support, many educational leaders at every level, from district superintendents to schoolteachers from the Inland Empire to Orange County, have continued to champion the work of ethnic studies, with community backing as well.
While starting the ethnic studies program, first offered in fall 2018, Rodarte, then social studies teacher at the Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts in LAUSD, realized the power of a supportive principal in enacting ethnic studies when lacking mandates from higher up.
“My first administrator was extremely supportive, so he was able to advocate for me to have all of the textbooks so that I could see not just what we were starting with, but our potential growth,” Rodarte said.
The next administrator cut the ethnic studies program from a course each ninth-grader took to only two periods.
“Then with the third administrator, we were able to grow the program back up again and make sure that every single freshman had access to the course,” Rodarte said.
Rodarte, who helped create an introductory course on LAUSD’s joint ethnic studies committee with UTLA, hoped the ethnic studies program at her school would be a model ahead of the district graduation requirement for incoming ninth graders that began in 2023.
“At UTLA, we’re incredibly lucky that our union has been working to add language around ethnic studies to our contract,” Rodarte said. “What that means is that we have more leverage with the district [regarding] how we roll it out in LAUSD.”
However, the UTLA-NEA vice president expressed concern and frustration about slow-moving processes and hesitation in the district, where ethnic studies uptake has significantly varied despite the requirement.
“The issue that we found is that not all schools are actually going through the process of educating and training the teachers that are going to have these classes,” Rodarte said. “We’re the second largest district in the country; if LAUSD falls, and we can’t protect academic freedom and we can’t protect the right of our children to learn complete history – not washed, not sanitized, but complete history – we will be the model for other states.”
In Pasadena, Rustin also credits John Muir High School’s principal for creating space in their schedule for ethnic studies while the district lacks a requirement.
He stated that he has not encountered any opposition from students or community members regarding ethnic studies, and often experiences the opposite.
“[The principal’s] support for the class is reflective of what our parents have asked for,” Rustin said. “During Back to School nights, especially the first couple of years where it was newer, my room was full of parents wanting to know more about it and making sure that their kid had it.”
Pasadena Unified School District developed its ethnic studies course for school board approval during the remote 2020-21 school year, after the approval of the state model curriculum. Rustin taught the first ethnic studies course at Muir in fall 2021, while chairing the IQC.
Though it is offered as an elective, Rustin reported that most 11th-graders at Muir took the ethnic studies course.
“It makes me sad that here we are in the 2020s, and students still by and large are receiving an education that they themselves are saying seems to be limiting them from the truth,” Rustin said. “That’s what I hear a lot from students, like, ‘how come we didn’t know this? How come this gets covered up?’”
Looking forward
At the end of the year, students overwhelmingly recommend others take an ethnic studies offerings in an annual survey administered by San Diego Unified to ethnic studies courses, according to Kay Flewelling, an ethnic studies resource teacher at the district.
“I took Dr. Rustin’s ethnic studies course last year and overall it was my favorite class after I assumed I was going to hate it,” wrote Ivan, a current Muir High School senior in Pasadena.
Amid the triumphs of getting a curriculum off the ground, there’s an awareness of the challenges of teaching a required course with limited resources, no state funding and volatile political dynamics.
“It’s hard ’cause you can’t just build a curriculum and be done,” Ramirez said. “You have to grow with the new kids … As a teacher, it can be really exhausting, ’cause you want it to be worthwhile, but we’re a tiny school. We don’t have a lot of wiggle room. I have three [different classes]… All teachers, when you really boil it down, we want to do the work, we just have to have the time [and] bandwidth.”
And yet, recent years have shown the need for ethnic studies more than ever, Medina said. He continues to consult with state legislators hoping to rally support again.
“We’re talking about one course out of four years, a comprehensive high school education, just one semester in California of all places, for students to learn about and explore the histories and legacies of communities of color, and to learn about some essential fundamentals about how we’ve become the society we’ve become,” Rustin said.
Rustin, who was not initially familiar with ethnic studies when he joined as chair of the CDE’s history-social science subject matter committee ahead of the model curriculum, said he’s realized that people are still uncomfortable addressing many of the societal issues — such as colonialism and racism — that spurred the ethnic studies movement.
“So, I thought it was going to be here by now, ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement, and it’s not, and maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s not,” he said.
The lack of a mandatory requirement hasn’t stopped many teachers from teaching it.
For now, people at all levels, across subjects and geographies, continue the work.
“I hear from teachers who aren’t officially teaching an ethnic studies graduation course, ‘but I’m still teaching ethnic studies’ – I’m like, well yeah, because you don’t have to have it be a graduation requirement to do it well,” Flewelling said.
In the meantime, the question lingers whether more support from the state for the requirement will come.
Medina, the author of the bill, reflects on what’s left of the political momentum that ushered it in.
“I think we could say that that window was closed,” he said.
Staff writer Jordan Darling and former Orange County Register 2026 Intern Sydney Gaw contributed to this project.
Ellen Wang was a 2026 intern with the Pasadena Star-News through a partnership with the Asian American Journalists Association’s Los Angeles Chapter, AAJA/LA.