Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s recent decision to rescind guidelines about culturally relevant teaching practices has some Black educators in Philadelphia worried about the impact on teacher recruitment in a district where the student body is already far more diverse than its mostly white teaching force.
Earlier this month, the state settled a lawsuit with a conservative advocacy group by agreeing that prospective and practicing teachers will no longer be required to adhere to guidelines that included developing awareness of how their own “unconscious biases” could affect their approach to teaching and their expectations of students.
The settlement didn’t ban cultural competence training, and the department promptly issued new – albeit optional – guidelines that preserve much of what existed before. The new guidelines also expand the recommended training for teachers to include trauma awareness and technological competencies.
But Black educators in Philadelphia say the settlement agreement has them concerned their state is moving backwards even as members of the incoming Trump administration have threatened to withhold federal aid from districts that engage in any initiatives that could be construed as promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, known as DEI, which is a frequent target of the right.
Crystal Edwards, principal of the W.D. Kelley Elementary School in North Philadelphia, sees the state’s move as yet another attack on learning about and appreciating the history of African Americans – a situation that is only likely to get worse during a Trump administration, she said.
“Teachers don’t have to learn to respect Black children, and America voted for that,” she said.
Aliya Catanch-Bradley, principal of Bethune Elementary School, said that educators must “make sure the history and cultures of students we serve are in the literature and books they read and in the media that surrounds them so they can see themselves in the educational context.”
Leaving culturally-responsive teaching practices up to individual districts “is unfortunate in a state that has so many small districts and a high incidence of book banning of international and multicultural texts,” Catanch-Bradley said.
Sharif El-Mekki, head of the Center for Black Educator Development, said the Pennsylvania settlement could be an unfortunate harbinger of what to expect during a second Trump administration.
“It’s the same playbook they use all around the country,” he said, “they try to erase progress.”
However, districts such as Philadelphia say they will continue to build culturally relevant practices into their professional development programs. Monique Braxton, a spokesperson for the district. said in a statement the old guidelines were “never officially released to school districts to implement.”
Despite the settlement, Braxton said “our curriculum and professional learning will continue to be focused on the implementation of high quality instructional resources to accelerate student achievement … and being inclusive of the students that we serve in Philadelphia.”
The settlement reached last week was a result of an April 2023 lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of three school districts and several parents and students. The suit challenged the state’s “Culturally-Relevant and Sustaining Education Program Framework Guidelines,” known as CS-RE, which were adopted in November 2022 after a long campaign by the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium.
CS-RE was meant to require school districts to actively consider “what does it mean for underrepresented groups in the state to feel more included in educator systems,” El-Mekki said.
But the lawsuit alleged that the mandated guidelines were part of a “woke” curriculum and violated teacher First Amendment rights. In its complaint, the plaintiffs said that making teachers aware of their “unconscious biases” was a “highly ideological belief” and represented “compelled speech.”
The Thomas More Society described the settlement as a ‘triumph.”
Conservative groups have often gone to court to force changes in education policy, including a campaign to ban any explicit DEI initiatives in school districts and to limit affirmative action in college admission.
The settlement agreement also comes as Philadelphia — and the rest of the country — struggles with a teacher shortage crisis. Philly schools have hundreds of positions still unfilled on a permanent basis months into the school year and another 1,100 teachers with emergency certifications, meaning they are not fully qualified in the subjects or grade levels they are teaching.
One of the drivers of this crisis has been a steady decline in the number and proportion of teachers in Philadelphia who are Black. More than 50% of city students are Black, but less than a quarter of teachers are, and just 4% are Black men – although that number is twice the national figure of 2%.
El-Mekki said that among Black males who go to college, education is among the most popular majors. The problem is that inequities in K-12 education have impacted Black males to a greater degree than other segments of the population. A recent study by the Schott foundation found that while more Black students are graduating from high school, fewer are attending college, especially males.
That, he said, is due in part to how they feel they are treated during their own education.
“There is a reason” that more African Americans don’t go into teaching, El-Mekki said. What they experience during their own schooling makes them less likely to enter the teaching profession themselves. And the attrition rate among Black teachers is higher than for other groups, he said.
“That speaks to how educators of color experience their colleagues and supervisors,” he said. “We all have to take collective responsibility, and not just assume people of color aren’t interested. There are reasons, and we have to be mindful of how we listen and how we act.”
Training about cultural differences is valuable for all teachers, not just those who are white. Makiah Burroughs, who is Black, grew up in Philadelphia and attended mostly charters; El-Mekki was her principal at Mastery-Shoemaker. Burroughs said she’s seen the need for culturally responsive teaching firsthand.
During her own schooling in Philadelphia, she said, most of her teachers were white. “A lot of the teachers quit,” she said. “They were overwhelmed. They couldn’t understand the kids.”
Fortunately, she said, her own teacher education at the University of Virginia included training on being culturally aware, which she said was invaluable “in helping me be the best teacher I could be.” Most of the children she worked with during her student teaching were white and from rural areas.
“It was a big process for me, putting all that effort to align with those students in Virginia and being able to understand them culturally, socially, and emotionally,” she said.
Now, Burroughs is a freshly-minted educator, teaching literacy skills to second graders at Mastery Mann Elementary School in West Philadelphia. “To come back to Philadelphia and for culturally relevant training to not be a requirement my state of Pennsylvania seems crazy to me,” she said.
She and other Black educators are wary of what may happen during the second Trump administration.
Ismael Jimenez, the Philadelphia’s director of social studies curriculum, said he feared the Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress could try to use a threat to withhold federal education aid as a “cudgel” on districts that maintain DEI initiatives or continue to promote culturally relevant teaching
The Pennsylvania case making culturally relevant teaching optional, along with a newly emboldened federal government “might create an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship” among educators here, he said.
“The culturally relevant piece, even the symbolism of that history being taught, is a threat to many within the society,” Jimenez said. The “triumph” here, he said referring to the Thomas More society’s statement, seemed to be the right for teachers to avoid being self-aware.
While promoting equitable teaching practices is part of the Philadelphia Board of Education’s Goals and Guardrails, Jimenez noted, the city is “still venturing into the waters” of culturally relevant education.
It did so after discovering that “one of the major concerns of parents and community members” was a lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of some people who work in the district’s schools.
“In a city like Philadelphia half the demographic is Black students,” said Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, Philadelphia’s chief of curriculum. “We can never not teach about who they are. It’s going to make it difficult if there are no spaces to learn about the students you are responsible for educating,”
Edwards, the Kelley principal, did hit on a note of optimism: “We have a long way to go, and we’ve come a long way, and it’s important to acknowledge how many victories we have won.”
Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at [email protected].
