Pennsylvania’s vision for civic education was shared with 75 curriculum coordinators, school administrators, teachers, non-profit executives and attorneys on January 13 at the National Constitution Center. PennCORD and the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) hosted a regional civics summit for Philadelphia, Delaware, Chester, Bucks and Montgomery counties at the second in a 3 part series of such summits across the Commonwealth. The first was held in Harrisburg in April. The next will be held in Pittsburgh.

Participants took full advantage of the rare gathering of distinguished education professionals and the full-day involvement of Education Secretary Zahorchak and First Lady Marjorie Rendell to share ideas on how to boost communication between PDE and the schools. PDE presented its architecture for boosting student achievement through alignment of six components known as the Standards Aligned Systems (SAS).   

In order to demonstrate the ease of aligning existing curricula and programs to SAS, a National Constitution Center classroom resource “Is the Constitution Color-Blind?” was modeled, using the civics curriculum framework as the structure for the lesson.  

Curriculum developers from school districts and non profits alike were encouraged to apply the framework to their materials and programs in order to align them to the Commonwealth’s vision for improved civic teaching.