Pa. has rescinded its ‘culturally relevant’ teaching guidelines after a lawsuit by a conservative group

Pennsylvania has rescinded its cultural competency standards for teachers, after a conservative legal group filed a lawsuit last year that claimed they were issued illegally and violated teachers’ First Amendment rights.

Under a settlement reached Wednesday with several Western Pennsylvania school districts, teachers, and parents who were plaintiffs in the case, the Pennsylvania Department of Education agreed to notify all K-12 schools that they have “no legal obligation to implement or comply” with the “Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education” guidelines.

Those guidelines had directed teachers to reflect on their own biases, work to remove bias from the education system, and recognize and challenge microaggressions, among other standards.

Instead, the department will issue “Common Ground Framework” guidelines, which refer to poverty, farming and military families, and homelessness as factors for educators to consider, though the department will not require school districts to use the guidelines.

Here’s what to know about the now-rescinded guidelines, the lawsuit, and what happens now:

As part of a standard enacted in 2022 requiring Pennsylvania teachers to be trained in “culturally relevant” education, the Pennsylvania Department of Education issued guidelines with nine competencies it said professional development and educator preparation programs were required to incorporate.

In part, the competencies called on teachers to reflect on their “own cultural lens,” including their connection to different identity groups; design “culturally relevant learning” that would enable students “to identify and question economic, political, and social power structures”; and provide “equitable and differentiated” opportunities to learn, within an environment that challenges “stereotypes and biases about the intelligence, academic ability, and behavior of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and other historically marginalized learners.”

Proponents said the guidelines stemmed from a need to better prepare all teachers to educate a diverse student body, and to better support — and, hopefully, retain ― teachers of color, who have been underrepresented in Pennsylvania’s classrooms.

In April 2023, a group of Western Pennsylvania school districts, teachers, and parents sued the Pennsylvania Department of Education, saying it had imposed the new competencies without following a required rule-making process.

“The public schools, teachers, and parents never had an opportunity to be heard on these issues,” said Thomas W. King III, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. King previously won a lawsuit overturning Pennsylvania’s school mask mandate, also by arguing former Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration had failed to follow its rule-making process.

But the lawsuit challenging the teacher guidelines — which was financed by the conservative Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based group that has defended antiabortion activists — also claimed that the guidelines violated teachers’ First Amendment rights.

“They’re quite radical,” King said, noting that the competencies included standards for particular beliefs, including for teachers to “believe and acknowledge that microaggressions are real.”

“You can’t regulate thought that way,” King said.

Under Pennsylvania’s school code, teacher preparation programs are still required to cover culturally relevant education, as are programs for new teachers entering a school district. But the state’s guidelines for meeting that requirement are changing.

The settlement agreement — made public Wednesday by the plaintiffs — includes a new “Common Ground” framework that will be issued to K-12 schools statewide, with “examples of considerations for professional development.” The examples list different factors that could affect students’ school experiences, including poverty, military families, farming families, homelessness, trauma, and disabilities. The document does not mention race, bias, or discrimination, among other differences with the prior guidelines.

The agreement includes three areas of competencies: cultural awareness; trauma-aware, mental health, and wellness; and technological and virtual engagement. But those sections are blank, with each reading “competencies will be inserted/linked here on website.”

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania education department, Erin James, said Thursday that the department was finalizing the guidelines, intended “to help educators create an inclusive learning environment for all students.”

The department will be contacting schools “in the coming days with guidance about the new framework,” James said..

The Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium, which helped develop the former guidelines, “stands ready to assist the department in the formulation of new guidelines and remains committed to helping school leaders ensure that every teacher is prepared to do their best for every student, no matter their background,” the group’s codirector, Donna-Marie Cole-Malott, an assistant professor of professional and secondary education at East Stroudsburg University, said in an email Thursday.

The settlement agreement does not govern colleges and universities and their teacher preparation programs, King said.

It also doesn’t bar school districts from following the former guidelines. “If there are school boards out there that want to implement regulations like this in their local school districts, that’s up to them,” King said.