The standard comes as education officials have voiced concern about Pennsylvania’s dearth of teachers of color, compared with the increasingly diverse public school population.
Aspiring Pennsylvania teachers are due to soon be trained in “culturally relevant” education, under a new state standard requiring teacher preparation programs to incorporate instruction in the subject.
Pennsylvania moved to incorporate a cultural relevance standard while confronting a teacher shortage, as well as reports of new teachers feeling unprepared to enter classrooms, said Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development. “We can’t retain educators” without “thinking about the humanity of all of our learners and educators within our classrooms,” said Cole-Malott, an assistant professor of professional and secondary education at East Stroudsburg University.Higher education programs that certify teachers are required to have “competencies, coursework and field experiences” that address culturally relevant and sustaining education, according to a regulation adopted by the state in April 2022.
“Numerous school districts across the state have been in touch with us to complain” about the guidelines, which are “so vague, and in many instances, incomprehensible,” said Thomas King, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. The Chicago-based Thomas More Society, which has defended anti-abortion activists and filed lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, is financing the case.
“That’s a huge red flag in the legal world,” King said. “Making people believe things is not the American way.”
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