Pennridge approves controversial new curriculum despite opposition, but delays some courses until next year

Over the outrage of community members who said Pennridge was pushing a political agenda into classrooms, the school board on Monday approved a new curriculum crafted by a consultant with ties to the conservative Hillsdale College — a directive that one resident called “disgusting.”

The Republican-led board delayed the implementation of the elementary social studies curriculum for one year, acknowledging teachers worried they didn’t have time to prepare with school already underway. (A new ninth-grade civics, economics and government curriculum, and seventh and eighth grade reading courses, were approved for the current year.)

But the board’s majority defended its decision to enlist Jordan Adams, the consultant recently employed by Hillsdale, and to require that teachers consult the college’s “1776 Curriculum” as a resource — despite intense criticism from parents fearing inaccuracy and partisan bias, and warnings from some educators that it would weaken the instruction offered by the district.

“It is my sincere belief that approving the curriculum in its current form would be a mistake that undermines the quality of education we should strive to provide our students,” Jim Kearney, a parent of two Pennridge students who is assistant director of teaching and learning for the Radnor School District, told the board Monday.

Kearney, a former social studies teacher who serves on the National Constitution Center’s Teacher Advisory Board, and has developed social studies curricula in Pennsylvania and nationally, said the new curriculum “exhibits significant pedagogical and content-related shortcomings.” He also said that Hillsdale’s curriculum — promoted by the college amid a broader conservative backlash to the New York Times’ 1619 Project — hadn’t garnered endorsements from nonpartisan historian associations.

Pennridge’s embrace of Hillsdale provides “a stark reminder of the detrimental effects to our community when politics informs education, instead of education informing politics,” Kearney said.

At a meeting last week, Pennridge teachers spoke out against the curriculum changes, including the push to adopt revamped social studies courses for first through fifth graders on the first day of school — before they’d had time to prepare lesson plans.

Responding to those concerns, board members voted to adopt the elementary curriculum next year. But those in control of the board voiced support for the partnership with Adams — whose nascent consulting company, Vermilion, was tapped by the district in April, and who told those gathered for a convention of the conservative group Moms for Liberty in June that he was the “fox in the henhouse” of school districts — and contended that the new curriculum was more rigorous than what Pennridge had been offering.

They also indicated they weren’t satisfied leaving curriculum development solely in the hands of the district’s employees.

“We also had asked numerous times, we don’t want sexualized and biased material pushed in. And again there was stuff pushed in,” said board member Megan Banis-Clemens. She didn’t give examples but complained that reading courses had been too “doom and gloom,” and should feature more “inspirational stories.”

In an email to the board, Adams, who lives in Michigan, said he was surprised that the district’s social studies supervisor had publicly disagreed with some of his recommendations during a meeting last week. He said that “lest Vermilion Education be accused of minimizing or removing instruction on challenging or violent topics from history,” the district had already planned to scale back lessons on Native Americans as part of revisions to the third-grade curriculum.

He also listed numerous resources and lesson plans that he said “stood out as potentially prejudiced, biased, inappropriate, or partisan,” including a 12th-grade course titled “Social Issues in Today’s World” that asks students to “identify the concepts of stereotypes, prejudice, racism, and discrimination” and “describe manifestations of racial and ethnic inequality in the United States.”

“Many of these topics and activities may be handled in an unbiased and nonpartisan manner, but many are also typically associated with a one-sided treatment and without clarity or explicit parameters on how to address these items, exposing teachers to accusations of bias or ideology,” Adams said in the email.

Some who spoke in favor of the curriculum accused teachers of pushing a liberal agenda. One woman said her grandchildren have “been traumatized with all the federal influence” on schools, and called Hillsdale, a Christian school, “an honorable college with good moral values.”

Another man said he agreed that teachers weren’t prepared for the new curriculum — because “they have been political activists in the classroom for so long,” they couldn’t appropriately teach children the role of citizenship.

The curriculum supporters drew some applause. Over the weekend, a group called Hope for PA issued a call for “talented clappers,” even if they lived outside the district, to attend and applaud the board for “creating a curriculum that includes children learning about the blessings of living in the United States.”

But the loudest cheers came from those speaking out against the proposals. One woman said she was presenting her seventh grader’s principal with a form to opt out of Vermilion’s curriculum while also looking at schools outside the district.

”My son loves history ... and I’m horrified that this is what he could be learning,” she said, “so it’s really disgusting that it’s come to this.”

(Opt-out demands create a problem, noted Joan Cullen, a board member opposed to Vermilion: “This isn’t just something where you can say, ‘I don’t want my child to read The Kite Runner.’ His suggestions are woven throughout the curriculum.”)

While some in favor of the curriculum pointed out that Pennsylvania’s school code specifies that history courses should emphasize “the good, worthwhile, and best features” of the development of the United States and the “high standard of living” of U.S. citizens, “a lot’s changed” since the code was written in 1949, April Fultz, of West Rockhill, told the board.

“America is exceptional in many ways ... but there are ways in which we’re still not exceptional,” Fultz said. “To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.”