School District of Philadelphia pays organization promoting “educational equity and racial justice” almost $1 million for services

The Center for Black Educator Development (CBED) is an organization dedicated to “rebuilding the national black teaching pipeline to achieve educational equity and racial justice.” The organization supports schools hiring staff based on racial identity with a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona explicitly promoting the idea. CBED has a letter that anyone can sign “if you agree that the Biden administration should prioritize adding one million teachers of color to our schools over the next decade.” The group also supports “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education.” The term “culturally responsive” is often used to describe a method of teaching that includes the race and ethnicity of students as part of the lessons taught in classrooms.

Parents Defending Education submitted a public records request to the School District of Philadelphia seeking any agreements with CBED or any payments to the organization. The district provided PDE with a contract with CBED for $153,560. The contract had a start date of January 31, 2020, and an end date of December 31, 2020. This contract included services for “early cultivation of interest in teaching,” “high quality individual, professional, and academic mentorship for black and Latino youth,” “in-service support,” and “alleviating financial barriers.”

This program appears to specifically target black students: “The Center is poised to attract Black high school and college students aspiring to be educators.” The program also states that “pre-apprentice educators will receive mentorship, leadership development and exposure to a Black pedagogical framework, educator activism experiences, and a racial-social justice lens.” This is accomplished through a “Liberation Academy.”

Exhibit F of the contract shows that the Pennsylvania Department of Education provided the school district with $489,279 as part of the “Aspiring 2 Educate” grant. This grant is how the school district paid CBED with a funding amount of $162,000 for this purpose.

Additional contracts that PDE received from the district with CBED include the following:

• May 3 – June 30, 2021: $16,500
• May 31 – November 30, 2022: $99,999
• February 16 – June 30, 2023: $7,200
• May 29 – August 31, 2023: $95,000
• May 23 – June 30, 2023: $7,200
• November 1, 2023 – June 28, 2024: $103,200
• November 1, 2023 – June 30, 2025: $103,206
• January 19 – June 30, 2024: $2,500
• May 29 – August 31, 2024: $369,000

In total, the school district has paid or is in the process of paying CBED an amount of $957,365.