A $5 million planned overhaul of Portland Public Schools’ social studies curriculum for middle and high school students is getting pushed back three years to September 2026.
That will mark a nearly 20-year span between updates. Such a refresh is supposed to occur every seven years but hasn’t happened in Portland Public Schools since 2008.
The district had originally planned to pick a curriculum and put it in place citywide this coming September, and classrooms have been field-testing potential new social studies curriculum materials.
If the district had stuck to its plan, it would have marked the third big phase-in of new curriculum on a core subject matter in three years. Elementary school educators began using a new math curriculum in September 2021; a new math curriculum for middle and high schoolers followed in September 2022. And teachers at all grade levels started this year with new materials for reading, writing and English.
But getting individual teachers and entire buildings up and running with those already-in-process adoptions has been a big and bumpy lift, especially coming off pandemic disruptions, chief academic officer Kimberlee Armstrong told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
“We really need to take the time to make sure that we get our full implementation of our new instructional materials across English language arts,” Armstrong said. “We do have some schools that have been in need of some support, whether it’s for the use of materials or the training around it.”
Complicating matters, the district is gutting its “teachers on special assignment” program to balance its budget amid declining enrollment and the expiration of federal pandemic aid. Teachers on special assignment are the fleet of educators considered subject matter experts who work out of the district’s central office and are responsible for overseeing new curriculum adoptions. They also mentor classroom teachers on instructional strategies, including coaching them on how to incorporate new material.
But next year, instead of that districtwide, subject-specific model, many teachers on special assignment will work as “instructional coaches” responsible for helping an individual school’s teachers across all disciplines. The change is part of the district’s drive to get more adults into school buildings, instead of working out of the central office, Armstrong said. and there will still be supervisory level district employees managing the technical aspects of curriculum adoption.
Social studies curriculum has been a political hot potato nationwide as lawmakers wade into the debate about how educators can and cannot teach the United States’ fraught, nuanced history of inequality, particularly around racism, slavery, immigration and gender equity. In some states, like Florida, lawmakers have banned the teaching of topics considered “inherently divisive.”
Oregon stands in sharp contrast to that: the state was the first in the country to require the teaching of ethnic studies as a part of the social studies curriculum, a mandate that kicks in for the 2026 school year. Armstrong said making sure that Portland’s curriculum aligns with those requirements is another reason for the pause.
In Portland, teachers working on the social studies adoption said they were prioritizing diverse perspectives and seeking textbooks that would reframe the Eurocentric ideas and cultures that have traditionally shaped history lessons of the past. To address this, the district will purchase a supplementary set of materials, called Black History 365, in time for grades 6-12 to start using next year.
But waiting to put new core textbooks in place carries a cost to the district’s equity goals, Armstrong acknowledged, because it means a patchwork of materials will remain in use districtwide, as individual teachers seek to supplement or update lessons, and that the student experience won’t be uniform from school to school.
The district hopes to address that by hosting a website where social studies teachers can share and swap links to supplementary materials, she said.
Curriculum adoptions are not cheap. Portland has set aside nearly $54 million from its 2020 school bond to buy new core course materials. Armstrong said another reason to hold off on the rollout is to get more feedback from families, students and teachers on such a big investment.
Teachers by and large agree that the process has been rushed and that some of the textbooks under consideration by the district don’t align with state standards, including not delving deeply enough into ancient world history, said Angela Bonilla, the head of the Portland Association of Teachers.
— Julia Silverman, @jrlsilverman, jsilverman@oregonlive.com
