A nonpartisan education watchdog is raising objections to a new ethnic studies course for high school seniors in Pittsburgh Public Schools, arguing that the curriculum goes beyond teaching history and instead trains students to become political activists. The North American Values Institute, known as NAVI, reviewed district documents obtained through right-to-know requests and contends that the second half of the course pushes students toward advocacy rather than inquiry.
«I have a simple philosophy: Teach kids about revolutions, don't recruit them to be in one,» said Steve Rosenberg, NAVI's Pennsylvania director. Rosenberg said the materials he reviewed lacked counterarguments and presented contested ideas about power and privilege as settled fact.
The course is organized into five units taught over several weeks. The first two units cover identity formation, cultural heritage and historical migration. NAVI's concerns center on Units 3 through 5. In Unit 3, students examine how systems of power are built and how they can be «challenge[d], resist[ed] and restructure[d]» to make them «equitable for all.» Learning outcomes include explaining how those systems give privilege to specific groups, how they develop inequities, and how marginalized communities have shifted power dynamics.
Unit 4 asks students to explore the limits of power systems, including how they affect access to opportunities and resources, and to «develop and propose strategies to advocate for change within social systems that create inequitable outcomes for different ethnic groups.» Unit 5 moves from analysis to action: students must «develop an action plan, including a clear problem, goal, and steps» and «develop and communicate solutions to community issues relating to race and diversity,» working with others inside the school or the wider community.
Rosenberg said those units differ sharply from simply learning about the experiences of different groups in American history. He also objected to how the course handles Jewish identity. Unit 1 of a College in High School syllabus includes readings on Whiteness and privilege alongside Eric Goldstein's «The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity.» Rosenberg argued that framing Jewish identity primarily through privilege misrepresents the Jewish experience and noted the absence of a counter reading.
Pittsburgh Public Schools disputed NAVI's characterization. Dr. Ann Fillmore, the district's executive director of K-12 Literacy, Humanities and Library Services, said the organization received unit overviews rather than the full curriculum, and that some documents were individual teacher syllabi, including for a dual-enrollment course affiliated with LaRoche University that the district's curriculum office did not create. Fillmore said the district's unit overviews have been revised for the 2026–2027 school year.
Fillmore called NAVI's description inaccurate and said the curriculum is designed to teach civic reasoning, not political activism. «We don't train students — it is disrespectful to what the education institution is — we want them to develop their own original ideas, understandings of history, and solutions to problems, based on the principles of inquiry-based learning and National Council for the Social Studies College, Career, and Civic Life Framework,» she said.
She said Units 3 and 4 are grounded in that framework and aim to «promote engaged and active citizenship by helping students identify community issues, investigate them through research, evaluate potential responses, and consider how communities work together to address challenges.»
The dispute reflects a broader national debate over what public school students should learn about race, power and identity, and how much classroom time should be devoted to civic action. As the school year begins, parents and advocacy groups across the country are scrutinizing curricula, and districts are facing pressure from multiple directions over how they teach contested subjects. In Pittsburgh, the disagreement now turns on whether the course's final units represent a legitimate civics education or a step toward political organizing.