AB 2864: Pupil instruction: Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882: Chinese Americans' contributions to establishment of transcontinental railroad.

Existing law requires the State Department of Education to incorporate materials relating to civil rights, human rights violations, genocide, slavery, and the Holocaust into publications that provide examples of curriculum resources for teacher use, consistent with the subject frameworks on history and social science and other requirements. Under existing law, the Legislature encourages the incorporation of survivor, rescuer, liberator, and witness oral testimony into the teaching of human rights, genocide, and the Holocaust. Existing law establishes the Instructional Quality Commission and requires the commission to, among other things, recommend curriculum frameworks to the State Board of Education.

This bill would encourage all state and local professional development activities to provide teachers with content background and resources to assist them in teaching about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the contributions of Chinese Americans to the establishment of the transcontinental railroad. The bill would require those topics to be considered for inclusion, as provided, when the state board revises and adopts the history-social science curriculum framework on or after January 1, 2017.