There is debate around offering ethnic studies to high school students. Ethnic studies connects learning to students' lives and analyzes the workings of racism to construct avenues toward equity. As the debate unfolds, it is critical to examine ethnic studies' implications for youth development and the mechanisms that link it to student outcomes. One of ethnic studies' long-stated goals is fostering students' critical consciousness. Critical consciousness refers to critical reasoning around inequality (critical reflection), motivation to challenge inequality (critical motivation), and action taken to disrupt inequality (critical action). Little research has examined youth critical consciousness development within ethnic studies-a consciousness-raising system. Consequently, this longitudinal mixed-methods study examines students' critical consciousness development in ethnic studies and sheds light on the contextual characteristics (i.e., critical school socialization) that foster critical consciousness. Analyses of 459 ninth-grade students' (52% girls, 4% nonbinary
1% Asian, 1% Black, 4% multiracial, 64% Latinx, 7% Native American, 15% described their own race, 7% skipped the question