Cultural Relevance and School Belonging at Scale: Evidence from a Districtwide Ethnic Studies Expansion

Biraj Bisht

Schools are among the primary institutions through which young people develop their identities, aspirations, and sense of belonging. Yet conventional curricula and pedagogies often fail to affirm these dimensions for historically marginalized students. Patterns of elevated absenteeism, disciplinary exclusion, and persistent opportunity gaps predate the pandemic but have deepened since, and they disproportionately affect the students who are least reflected in standard curricula. These challenges persist despite decades of achievement-oriented reform, suggesting that such policies alone are insufficient when students lack connection and belonging in school. Ethnic Studies (ES) responds to this gap by centering the histories, cultures, and intellectual contributions of communities of color, foregrounding belonging as a pathway to academic engagement through identity exploration and community-based inquiry. Prior research suggests that ES can improve student outcomes, but evidence remains limited to small-scale pilot programs. As ES expands rapidly through statewide mandates, rigorous evidence on its effects at scale is essential. This dissertation investigates whether districtwide ES expansion improves student outcomes, and under what conditions it is most effective. I find that ES enrollment improves GPA and reduces course failures across subjects, with particularly strong effects in math and science, suggesting that ES strengthens overall academic engagement. I also examine whether these benefits extend to behavioral outcomes including attendance, suspensions, and self-reported belonging. I then ask whether students benefit more when their ES teacher shares their racial or ethnic background. Finally, I apply natural language processing to statewide ES syllabi to identify what distinguishes more effective courses.

About Biraj Bisht

Biraj Bisht is a PhD candidate in education at the University of California, Irvine's School of Education. His research focuses on how school systems can be organized to improve student learning, belonging, and opportunity, with a particular emphasis on scalable policies and practices that strengthen students' connections to school. His current work examines culturally relevant pedagogies and high-impact tutoring as strategies for achieving these goals. He combines descriptive, causal inference, and natural language processing methods to produce evidence with direct policy relevance. His research has been published in the American Educational Research Journal and Educational Researcher and has been featured by the Hechinger Report, Brookings, and Education Week. Before pursuing education research, he was a tutor across multiple contexts and a field research assistant in Uganda, where he supported research on financial inclusion programs. He later joined the Annenberg Institute at Brown University as a research analyst, where he contributed to a national effort to examine how high-quality tutoring could address pandemic learning loss. He received a B.S. in economics from the University of Oregon Clark Honors College and an M.A. in urban education policy from Brown University. Outside of research, he is happiest near the ocean, swimming, and baking sourdough.