Testimony Before House Democratic Policy Committee
Former Congressmen Jim Gerlach and Joe Hoeffel, co-chairs of PA Civics
September 8, 2025
Chairman and members of the committee – thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in today’s policy hearing regarding civics education in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
I am Jim Gerlach and I co-chair, along with my former colleague in Congress, Joe Hoeffel, former Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati, former House Speaker Keith McCall, and former State Reps. Karen Boback and Kathy Mandarino, a nonprofit, bipartisan coalition of 25 partner organizations called PA Civics. Our mission is to promote civics education in our state and, if you access our website at pacivics.org, you will note the broad array of organizations who have joined us in our efforts – from the National Constitution Center to the PA Bar Association, the Heinz History Center, the Rendell Center for Civic Engagement, the PA Chamber, Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, Bill of Rights Institute, the Jack Miller Center, and many other great organizations. We are especially pleased to also have the Committee of Seventy, who I believe will also provide testimony today, be our lead administrative partner. For without their terrific day-to-day support, we would not have experienced the progress that our coalition has made in the past five years.
PA Civics began in 2018 when the Former Members of Congress Association (FMC) reached out to former members across the country asking for us to get involved in bipartisan efforts to promote and advance civics in our individual states. That call to action in turn got me and fellow co-chair Congressman Joe Hoeffel engaged in outreach to our early partners at the Rendell Center, National Constitution Center, and Committee of Seventy to strategize on how we can collectively help drive civics education forward. At that point, Act 35 had also just been signed into law by Gov. Wolf, so we specifically focused on how that Act was being implemented and what impact it was having on civics education in the state.
Unfortunately, just when we were anxiously awaiting statewide implementation of the Act, COVID hit and our schools, quite understandably, were unable to fully comply with the Act’s civic assessment provisions. Nonetheless, once our schools began fully implementing the Act, it became clear to us that the Act, while passed with a laudatory purpose, is relatively weak in uniformly advancing civics across the state. The Act simply requires that our students undergo a “civics assessment” at some point between grades 7–12 and that the schools, which determine what the assessment actually is and when it is given, then report their results to the state Department of Education. DOE then collects the assessment results from around the state and can report on how many schools complied with the assessment requirement and how many students passed the assessment in their school. However, these results really don’t tell us much in terms of actual civics proficiency since the substance of the civics tests can vary widely from school to school, and it can be given anywhere from grade 7 through 12. So DOE is, in reality, getting test results from students assessed in up to six different grade levels across over 501 school districts and charter schools utilizing a multitude of different assessment tools. As such, trying to collate all of that information year to year to then determine the actual level of our students’ civics proficiency is extremely difficult if not impossible. Consequently, we at PA Civics decided that if we want to truly advance civics education in the state, we have to focus on four primary areas.
In short, we believe the legislature can provide real leadership in shaping our state’s civics education environment for this and coming generations. Here is where we believe you can really help—
We must work to update our state’s civics and history academic standards, which haven’t been updated pursuant to the PA School Code in over 20 years. Without clear, uniform, and grade-appropriate standards, the three pillars of outstanding civics education— (a) knowledge of our history and government structure, (b) skills necessary to engage in the community on issues of importance, and (c) pursuing pathways for civic action— simply cannot be properly taught consistently across the state. The Thomas Fordham Institute in 2021 recognized this weakness in our current standards by giving us the grade of “F” in the quality, clarity, and uniformity of our standards versus other states. And while we certainly believe our civics ed teachers in PA are as good as any in the United States, they can only work within the environment of the standards they are required to implement, so we need to move the State Board of Education process of updating and modernizing our standards forward as soon as possible so we can ultimately maximize the civics education experiences our students receive.
We must improve Act 35 itself so there is more consistency and uniformity around when students are tested, and the assessment tool that is specifically used to do that testing, which will thereby provide our teachers, government officials, and the public a much greater understanding—on a year-to-year basis—into how well we are preparing our future citizen-leaders regardless if they are in an urban, suburban, or rural district.
With better and more consistent information from our schools on how our students are performing year to year, we can continue to work with our civics teachers to provide them with best-in-nation resources, training, and professional development. Many of our PA Civics partners already provide outstanding teacher development programming, but year-to-year student assessment results will greatly help in developing new and innovative grade-based curricula and improving overall teacher development programming and resources over time.
And finally, when our students and civics teachers do great work, and our schools are markedly improving their civics education performance, we should all want to recognize and honor those achievers. So we believe civics seals on graduation diplomas, and teacher and school recognition initiatives, are wonderful ways to highlight civics education achievement across the state.
Of course, these initiatives cannot be undertaken overnight. However, as we head into our nation’s 250th celebration next year, we have a tremendous opportunity to continue our collective efforts to build great citizens in our Commonwealth. As Baruch Spinoza once said— “Great citizens are not born, they are made!” And I think we can all agree that our schools play a pivotal role in the making of great citizens. In fact, our fellow citizens recognize the role of schools in this endeavor. In a 2022 Cyngal survey, 79% of those surveyed agreed that teaching civics is important and over two-thirds said that it is more important today than five years ago.
We agree! That is why we are extremely excited to be discussing various initiatives with House Education Chairman Peter Schweyer, Minority Chairman Bryan Cutler, Senate Education Chair Lynda Schlegel-Culver, and Minority Chair Lindsey Williams. We have been most impressed with their great interest in the future of civics education in Pennsylvania, and we look forward to continuing to work with them, you, and your colleagues.
Our PA Civics coalition firmly believes that the window of opportunity for bipartisan, collective action to move Pennsylvania to the top in quality civics education is right before us. And we can achieve that hugely important success if we all recognize that the future of America is closely tied to how well we prepare our children here in the Commonwealth to be the knowledgeable and engaged leaders we will need them to be.
Thank you so much for inviting us to join you today and for making civics education the subject of this policy hearing!
Former Congressmen Jim Gerlach and Joe Hoeffel
Co-chairs, PA Civics