The Long Beach Unified School District is developing new high school ethnic studies courses to meet state graduation requirements.
Assembly Bill 101, signed by Governor Gavin Newsome in October 2021, made ethnic studies a graduation requirement for high school students. Under the bill, schools are required to offer ethnic studies courses by 2025, but it will not be a graduation requirement for students until 2029.
According to the California Department of Education, ethnic studies is the “interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, with an emphasis on the experiences of people of color in the United States.”
The ethnic studies curriculum developed by the California Department of Education will cover Black/African American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander groups, as well as other marginalized ethnicities within those core groups.
The district already offers a few ethnic studies options for students including dual enrollment at Cal State Long Beach. Dual enrollment course topics include introductory classes in Chicano Asian American, and African American studies.
Intro to ethnic studies meets the graduation requirement for high schools and California State Universities.
The Assistant Superintendent of High Schools, Jay Camerino, said the district originally considered two models. The first would be a stand-alone, one-semester course assigned to ninth graders and paired with a health course for the other semester. However, this would require hiring more teachers and presents potential course overload for ninth graders.
The second model consisted of creating a year-long course that combines ethnic studies and history classes for juniors that would also fill the current history/social science graduation requirement. This approach would require new training but not additional hiring. However, this means students would have less time to meet the ethnic studies requirement.
A limit to the second model is that it would not align with the Advanced Placement U.S. history course as that curriculum is defined by the College Board.
The district chose to offer both options to accommodate students.
Board member Juan Benitez expressed concern over avoiding disparities between the standard U.S. history course combined with ethnic studies and the AP U.S. history course.
Benitez said he wanted to avoid instances where some students receive an ethnic studies-lens to understand U.S. history while other students receive a “watered-down” version of history.
The high school offices will work over the next school year alongside OCIPD, teachers and parent groups to develop the curriculum and present it to the board for approval at a later date.
If approved, the district will begin offering the new course in September 2025.