This brief provides an overview of our analysis of how student participation in SFUSD’s 9th grade ethnic-studies (ES) curriculum influenced several core academic outcomes (i.e., student instructional time, credits earned, and course performance as measured by overall and subject-specific GPA).
Our research design leverages the fact that, for five 9th grade cohorts in three SFUSD high schools (Balboa HS, fall 2011 to fall 2013 and Lincoln HS and Washington HS, fall 2011), entering 9th graders were assigned to the ES course if their grade-8 GPA was below 2.0. That is, we estimate the causal effects of ES participation through a “regression discontinuity” (RD) design that effectively compares outcomes among students whose grade-8 GPA placed them just below (i.e., “treatment”) versus just above (i.e., “control”) this threshold.