The National Education Association (NEA) is calling for an ethnic studies course to become a graduation requirement for high school students around the country, according to Watchdog.org.
In districts across the country, the NEA-backed ethnic studies courses would require additional teachers to be hired. The addition of more staffers would in turn give the NEA more due-paying members.
In the case of the Los Angeles school districts, the original projection of additional costs was only $4 million. However, after months of planning, the ethnic studies course would boast a $73 million price tag.
A majority of that $73 million will go towards paying the new staff needed to properly carry out this course.
The teachers’ union hopes that Los Angeles will serve as a model for the rest of the country. In previous studies done by the NEA, ethnic studies courses supposedly worked to increase graduation rates among minority students.
But as Fabio Rojas, an associate sociology professor at Indiana University, pointed out in a comment to Watchdog.org, the makeup of each city varies so the actual success of the course nationally cannot be determined just from the Los Angeles model.