Despite changes in state and federal laws and a court settlement, it appears that Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) ideology continues to be taught in some Delaware Valley school districts.
Administrators and teachers from the Upper Merion School District were among the nearly 600 educators who participated in a recent Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium (PEDC) event. Administrators from the Upper Darby and Hatboro-Horsham school districts also gave presentations.
While the statewide curriculum has been changed from Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education (CRSE) to “Common Ground,” the curricula share many commonalities. The educators discussed continuing to do the “work” of teaching DEI.
DEI content in classroom instruction is premised on the belief that immutable qualities, such as race or sex, should matter more than character, merit, and academic achievement, according to Chris Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, one of the leading scholars on the topic.
“DEI is not about diversity of thought or inclusion for all—it’s about enforcing a narrow political orthodoxy based on race, gender, and sexual identity,” Rufo said.
In April, the federal Department of Education sent a letter to each state’s education department, asking them to certify that they saying they are not violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination in federally funded programs.
The PEDC event appears to have been designed to help instructors who want to continue to use DEI content get around legal and policy roadblocks.
When an attendee asked about “pushback” for “engaging in equity work” — a common euphemism for DEI instruction — Susan Silver, Ed.D., assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction at Upper Merion, said in her district, “I’m very fortunate because where I am, we just do it.”
The summit began with a “land acknowledgement” — a practice dismissed by critics as “woke” performance art — calling for restoring the lands of Pennsylvania to “the Indigenous nation or nations that previously had sovereignty over it.”
Upper Darby School District Title IX administrator Kimisha Simpson, Ed.D., and Samuel Gonzalez, Ed.D., an assistant principal from Hatboro-Horsham, spoke during a session on “Navigating the Future: Culturally Sustaining Practices for 2025 and Beyond.”
“These recurring changes do not impact our core values, and we have to stay true to what we know our mission and vision are and embed that into any template, any framework that we’re utilizing,” said Simpson.
“There’s been a deliberate focus towards neutral, systems-oriented and inclusive phrasing. Prior to Common Ground, we saw language that focused and honed in on personal responsibility, emotional intensity, and direct engagement with topics such as race, bias, and microaggressions. Common Ground now softens that tone and has terms like ‘recognize’ and ‘acknowledge’ over directive verbs such as ‘believe,’ ‘challenge,’ or “disrupt,” said Simpson.
Upper Merion teachers participated in “Flipping the Script: Changing the Narrative of Arab and Muslim Americans,” presented by Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi of Altair Education Consulting. Ramadan-Shinnawi had mourned Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who orchestrated the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks where terrorists killed 1,200 Israeli civilians and kidnapped 250 others, including Americans.
An Upper Merion High School teacher said he does not like to use traditional textbooks. He said he teaches the song, “PLO Style,” to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Some of the lyrics are: “Here comes the ruckus, the mother***ing ruckus/Thousands of cut throats and purse snatchin’ f**ks/ Straight from the brain, I’ll be givin’ you the pain anger/Comin’ from the thirty-sixth chamber bang!”
An Upper Merion counselor pushed back on claims that the pro-Palestinian approach to teaching about the conflict is “antisemitic.”
“It’s not antisemitic to be against genocide,” she said.
Rmadan-Shinnawi told the gathering that American foreign policy is based on racism.
A Jewish parent with a child in the Upper Merion School District, who asked that her name not be used, was concerned about what educators might teach her child. She contacted a school district administrator who was unfamiliar with the Educator Diversity Consortium and told her he would look into it.
“This report confirms what we’ve been tracking: a deeply entrenched ideological bias in teacher training and curriculum development across Pennsylvania. NAVI remains committed to exposing these practices and supporting parents who want schools focused on excellence, not activism,” said Steve Rosenberg, North American Values Institute‘s Philadelphia regional director.
Also, at the conference, state Rep. Justin Fleming (D-Dauphin) and former state Secretary of Education Eric Hagarty took part in a “kitchen table” talk. Hagerty, now chief clerk for Dauphin County, said that while he was education secretary, he was most proud of implementing CRSE guidelines with the help of PEDC.
“One plea I would make to folks is don’t forget about the importance of implementation…to realize our goals, it’s really important to stay on top of the Department of Education,” Hagarty said.
The Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium is a nonprofit organization. However, it has a relationship with the State Department of Education. It developed the DEP’s previously used “Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education Competencies” for training teachers and professional development. These guidelines were revised after the state settled with the Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm which represented parents, teachers and school districts in a First Amendment case.