Who Is Jordan Adams & Why Did He Review Montezuma- Cortez’s ELA Curriculum Choices

Sept. 2026

At the September 1st Montezuma-Cortez School Board meeting, the school board directors discussed English Language Arts curriculum options after deciding not to adopt the Bluebonnet ELA curriculum. During the meeting, school board director Mike Lynch, a Colorado Leaders for Academic Success Board member, read an English Language Arts curriculum review report prepared by School Boards for Academic Excellence Academic Advisor Jordan Adams. CLAS is the Colorado chapter of School Boards for Academic Excellence. CLAS & SBAE members have access to free basic curriculum review services from Jordan Adams. Full curriculum audits are available at a discounted rate.

Despite Lynch’s efforts, the board voted 4-1 to follow interim superintendent recommendations over Adams’s and Lynch’s suggestions. Interim Superintendent Pearson recommended the district use Benchmark Digital with print consumables for their 2026-2027 ELA Curriculum.

In June, the former Montezuma-Cortez Superintendent signed an agreement with Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles, which opted Montezuma-Cortez into the Houston Independent School District-based New Education System (NES) model, a reform strategy that promises to improve test scores.

Lynch’s explains and reads Jordan Adams’ report beginning at the 25-minute mark.

Who is Jordan Adams?

Jordan Adams is an Independent Education Consultant and academic advisor to School Boards for Academic Excellence. He graduated from Hillsdale College in 2013 with a degree in political science. Hillsdale is a conservative college in southern Michigan and is known for its mission to preserve “our Western philosophical and theological inheritance tracing to Athens and Jerusalem.”

Adams’s career has remained closely connected to Hillsdale College and the Moms for Liberty movement in Florida, leading some to view him as a partisan figure. He once described his role as a “fox in the henhouse,” a metaphor that caused concern among parents and educators. Adams taught history at Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, Texas (2013–2016), and at Saint Agnes School in Minnesota (2016–2018), where he also served as history department chair.

After his classroom teaching career, he worked for nearly five years as a K–12 instructional coach and curriculum specialist at Hillsdale College before founding his independent consulting firm, Vermilion Education. His work includes curriculum vetting and development, teacher training, state standards revisions, and public testimony for a variety of entities, including the Florida Department of Education, the South Dakota Department of Education, the Michigan Senate, and the White House Conference on American History hosted by the Trump Administration. Jordan Adams recently served on the Texas Social Studies Curriculum Advisory panel with David Barton, David Randall from Civics Alliance.

Adams is known to support Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum. Interestingly, the 1776 curriculum is also listed as an example of effective curricula on the School Boards for Academic Excellence’s Resources Library. According to the Social Studies Advocate, “Historians who have reviewed the Hillsdale curriculum that Adams’s submission reflects have been direct. Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who has also criticized the 1619 Project, and thus cannot be dismissed as a partisan critic, has said the curriculum “fundamentally distorts modern American history into a crusade of righteous conservative patriots against heretical big-government liberals” and “has no place in any school system that values education over indoctrination.” A member of Adams’s own content advisor panel, Kate Rogers, wrote in her March 2026 feedback that the draft was “blurring the separation between Church and State intended by the country’s founders and violating the First Amendment.” Her assessment came from inside the process, reviewing a draft that Adams’s submission had helped to shape.“

In 2025, Adams consulted with a school district in Missouri; the Francis Howell School District paid Jordan Adams thousands of dollars in fees for services not approved by the Board of Education or the district, according to documents obtained by St. Louis Public Radio. Francis Howell paid out a conservative consultant hired behind the district’s back

Over the past several years, Jordan Adams’s political actions have continued to influence Social Studies and curriculum decisions in several states. The Montezuma-Cortez community should continue to monitor and ask questions of its school board directors.

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