LiberatED: K-12 Liberated Ethnic Studies Industrial Complex

Some states offer, or have offered, K-12 school districts access to state funding and/or grants to help districts offset the costs of starting up ethnic studies programs or curriculums. In the past, California allotted state funding to help districts establish and implement ethnic studies. In May 2025, the Governor of California withheld funding set aside for the ethnic studies mandate, rendering the course requirement potentially not in effect.

In spring 2025, the Minnesota Department of Education released a grant application for “Ethnic Studies Course Development for Grades 5-12: Community-Centered Knowledge” with the expressed purpose of supporting “districts and charters in the development, evaluation, and implementation of 5-12 ethnic studies courses.” The state set aside $1,300,000 for the grant program, allowing requests of up to $50,000 in support of “inter-district, co-op, or tribal school collaborations to develop or implement ethnic studies courses” or “to support school-level applicants, which could support individual or teams of educators working with their building administration.”

Gibbs Smith Education’s “Voices: An Ethnic Studies Survey” states that it “examines the experiences and contributions of Indigenous, Black, Latino, Pacific Islander, and Asian Americans. Students will learn the terms and tools they need to analyze the impacts of race and ethnicity in US history and the present day.”

The textbook includes “counter-narratives of marginalized groups” and equips “students with the skills and knowledge they need to identify and overcome oppression.”

The unit “Understanding Race and Ethnicity” includes lessons on “Intersectionality,” “Understanding Bias,” and “Forms of Discrimination.”

The timeline and images available online also feature Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

According to excerpts and images obtained by K12 Extremism Tracker, the Voices textbook includes lessons and content such as antiracism, climate justice and activism, decolonization, intersectionality, oppression, power, privilege, white fragility, and whiteness.

The unit titled “Understanding Race and Ethnicity” includes “luminaries” such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. An “Analyze & Answer” question asks students “How does DiAngelo’s description of White self-isolation reflect Kendi’s ideas about the complexity of racism and antiracism?”

The Unit 1 lesson “Forms of Discrimination” includes a page titled “Forms of Protest” which features a subsection titled “School Board Meetings” and states “Disagreement over issues such as the teaching of race and ethnic studies, masking during the COVID pandemic, and the rights of transgender students have led to events like the parents shown at this raucous school board meeting in Virginia.”

The subsection goes on to state that parent protests of school policies are “not just a recent phenomenon,” but are akin to the 1960s when “many White parents put their children into private schools in response to desegregation policies” and to the 1990s when “conservative parents protested the teaching of sex education in schools.”

Imagine Learning’s (parent company of Edgenuity) ethnic studies course for grades 9-12 states that it will “explore five key themes: (1) Identity, (2) Race and Ethnicity in the United States, (3) History and Movement, (4) Systems of Power, and (5) Social Movements and Equity” and will “critically examine the diverse cultural histories, social dynamics, and critical perspectives that shape the United States.”

The course will examine the “experiences of diverse ethnic groups, to deconstructing systems of power that perpetuate inequality, the course encourages critical analysis and empathy.”

Course objectives include a focus on the “formation of individual and collective identities,” investigating “resource distribution and environmental impact,” and analyzing “systems of power and inequality, including economic, political, environmental, and social.”

The course scope and sequence includes unites on “identity,” “race and ethnicity in the US,” “systems of power,” and “social movements and equity.”

A more thorough review of Imagine Learning’s “CA-Ethnic Studies” scope and sequence includes topics such as “cultural erasure,” “white privilege,” being “White in the US,” “Women and Femmes of Color in Oppressive Systems,” “housing” and “economic” inequality, “environmental justice,” resistance movements, and activism.

California Ethnic Studies Collection Guide

The Newsela California Ethnic Studies Collection was created in “collaboration with Community Responsive Education” and is aligned to the organization’s curricular framework. Content featured in the collection include “colorism”, “environmental racism”, “implicit bias”, “intersectionality”, “patriarchy”, and “white supremacy”.

Additionally, many of the questions provided in the document appear leading and biased towards a far-left social justice view of the world.

The collection units are “organized around four core themes of Ethnic Studies: Identity, systems and power, community stories and narratives, and movements and solidarity.”

The document states that it is also a “living resources” and they will be “adding more content as we are able to source it: more diverse stories and histories, more voices of communities of color, more local California connections.”

The unit focused on “Systems & Power” includes having students “examine the role of racism in the founding of the U.S. system of government,” “trace the development of white identity and white supremacy in the United States,” and “examine the effect of patriarchal systems on American society, particularly women of color.”

The unit also teaches students about intersectionality, implicit bias, and colorism. Learning objectives include students being able to “define intersectionality, and examine how it shapes their own and others’ experiences of systems,” “examine the idea of implicit bias, and connect it to larger systems of power,” and “define colorism and its relationship to systems such as imperialism and white supremacy.”

Another section in the unit focused on “borders” states that students will “analyze the development of national borders through the lens of systems of power.” Listed “supporting questions” include “What is the purpose of borders?” and “What is the relationship between borders and systems of power?”

Other unit topics include “police brutality,” “environmental racism,” “technology and racism,” and “curriculum” as it relates to “systems of power.” Support texts for these sections include a piece from Angela Davis, articles on “racial bias” in algorithms and artificial intelligence, and a collection of leftwing biased articles on curriculum matters.

The unit titled “Narratives & Community Stories” introduces students to “counter narratives” and how “racism and oppression” have impacted various ethnic groups throughout United States history.

The final unit on “Movements & Solidarity” includes topics and lessons focused on “social change,” “resistance,” and societal transformation. Movements and groups highlighted in this unit include the “Abolition movement,” “Black Power and Black Panthers,” “People of color in the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement,” “Black Lives Matter,” the “Movement for Reparations,” the “Land Back Movement,” and the “Environmental Justice Movement.”

The Washington state Ethnic Studies Collection overview features a lot of the same content as California but also includes “defining whiteness and otherness,” “Queer and Trans POC activism,” and media literacy.

The University of California Berkeley offers K-12 school districts several different opportunities for engagement related to ethnic studies. This includes:

UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project – K-12 Ethnic Studies

The University of California Berkeley’s History-Social Science Project – Ethnic Studies “provides guidance to high school teachers and school districts to assist them in developing Ethnic Studies courses.”

According to the website, California AB 101 – the state law requiring ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement – states that “high school teachers are required to:”

“familiarize themselves with current scholarly research around ethnic studies instruction, such as critically and culturally/community relevant and responsive pedagogies, critical race theory, and intersectionality, which are key theoretical frameworks and pedagogies that can be used in ethnic studies research and instruction” (CA Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, Chapter 3(PDF file)(link is external) pp 45-46). 

Under “Essential Theory, Concepts and Pedagogies,” the program includes “useful resources” on topics such as “The Four I’s of Oppression,” intersectionality, and critical race theory.

The project website also includes links to various other UC Berkeley resources for educators, including its High School Ethnic Studies Initiative Website and High School Ethnic Studies Initiative Resource Hub.

More information on this can be found in an accompanying LiberatED report on university ethnic studies here.

While the overall stated purpose of The Puente Project seems noble, the program prioritizes the integration of critical race theory and far-left social justice ideologies into its curriculum.

The program’s mission is “to increase the number of underrepresented students who enroll in four-year colleges and universities, earn college degrees and return to the community as mentors and leaders to future generations.”

The program curriculum includes various units, topics, and readings focusing on far-left ideologies such as “critical consciousness,” critical race theory, decolonization, environmental justice, liberation, linguistic justice, queer theory, and racial justice.

The first chapter of the curriculum, Racial Justice – Our Future History and Future, includes a note to the educator which states that an “essential concept to understand, and to help students understand and be able to analyze, is white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” It continues by claiming that it is “crucial because as Black Feminist Theory reminds us, systems of oppression are often interlocking.”

The chapter also includes “suggested activities” for middle school (MS), high school (HS), and community college (CC) students such as “Foundations: White Supremacy & How it Works.” The site links to a document titled “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy.”

The activity includes discussion questions such as “What is the relationship between capitalism and slavery?,” “What is the relationship between genocide and colonialism?,” and “Why does Andrea Smith argue we cannot disregard the “black/white binary” when organizing against systems of oppression?”

The chapter also includes “Articles + Essays” such as “The Combahee River Collective Statement,” Tema Okun’s “The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture,” and “In Defense of Looting.”