Jan Resseger looks at what it would mean to implement the policies of Trump and the newly-not-disavowed Project 2025 for education. Reposted with permission.
It is disgusting that Donald Trump’s election campaign set out to create the myth that the nation’s public schools are widespread settings for “woke” indoctrination. Good educators seek to make all students welcome and engaged. They are not pushing critical race theory to make school kids to feel guilty about our nation’s history, despite that our society has not always lived up to its proclaimed ideals. Neither are teachers and school counselors pushing kids to become gay or transgender. In fact Trump’s plea for reducing “woke” policy covers a more cynical plan to reduce the protection of the civil rights of racial minority and gay, lesbian and transgender students. Racism and homophobia seem to be at the center of both President-elect Trump’s re-election campaign and also the policies prescribed in Project 2025, which many believe has served as the handbook to Donald Trump’s educational priorities.
Education Week‘s Alyson Klein describes the public school policies in Trump’s recent campaign: “For months on the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to take money from school districts that teach critical race theory, champion a version of American history he sees as unpatriotic, or promote supportive policies and instructional practices for transgender students. In fact, Trump said he would sign an executive order on his very first day back in office to that effect. ‘We are going to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the shoulders of our children,’ Trump said at a July campaign event in Minnesota.”
In fact President-elect Trump’s policies go much deeper than merely cleansing the schools of policies he believes offend his supporters. By proposing to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, to remove some of the civil rights protections for vulnerable students, and to move responsibilities of its Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice, the President-elect has proposed turning back our nation’s progress in protecting the educational opportunity and safety of extremely vulnerable groups of children. Klein explains that Trump’s policies are based on a false understanding what the Office for Civil Rights does, why its work is important, and how today’s civil rights investigations of schools usually work. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) receives complaints, processes them, and then works with school districts to reform policy:
“OCR doesn’t just yank money from school districts. Instead, the loss of federal funding is just one—very rare—possible conclusion of a lengthy, detailed process that typically unfolds over the course of years. The office receives complaints from students, staff members, parents, or other community members alleging that a school or district has violated a key civil rights law—commonly Title VI of the Civil rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The department then investigates the claim and decides whether the school has indeed run afoul of the law. If so, the school or district could technically risk losing a portion of federal funding. But school districts seldom see their money revoked. Instead, OCR works to help them comply with civil rights laws… For instance, in 2010, OCR concluded that instruction of English learners in the Los Angeles Unified School District was grossly inadequate, prompting a reimagining of district practice.”
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights adds: “Project 2025 proposes that the Departments of Education and Justice… should enforce civil rights laws only in the courts, eliminating important administrative tools to address discrimination. The overwhelming majority of complaints of discrimination in schools are handled through administrative enforcement by… (the Department of Education’s) Office for Civil Rights… Without this process, fewer students would see schools and districts change their policies to prevent further discrimination, and fewer schools would have examples of how to comply with the law.” The Leadership Conference also reminds us that Project 2025 has also proposed to eliminate “disparate impact” as a standard. This means that it wouldn’t constitute a violation if, for example, a school district has engaged in a pattern of disparate school discipline policies for children of different races.
The National Education Policy Center has released a series of short, accessible interviews with academic researchers who explore the history and implications of education proposals in this year’s Trump campaign and Project 2025. Two of these short briefs explore the civil rights issues in Trump’s proposals relating to, first, preventing homophobia at school, and second confronting racism.
In the first, Protections against Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination in Schools: The Federal Role, University of Colorado, Boulder professor, Elizabeth Meyer explains the history of the federal government’s role in protecting students’ civil rights around sexual orientation and gender identity: “The Federal Government got officially involved in this issue… in 2010 when the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued Title IX guidance… that explicitly included LGBT students as entitled to protection from discrimination. The guidance prohibited forms of bullying and harassment that are ‘gender-based’ or related to ‘stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity’… The goal has been primarily to address anti-LGBTQ+ violence in schools and ensure sexual and gender minority youth are able to access educational opportunities… Starting in 2017, under the Trump administration that approach changed, as the guidance documents mentioned above were rescinded and official statements were issued refusing to hear complaints about anti-transgender discrimination in schools… This backslide in legal protections for LGBTQ+ people ended in 2021 whcn President Biden issued his Executive Order…. Yet these protections are currently only symbolic in much of the country, since their implementation is being halted by injunctions affecting students in 26 states.”
Meyer concludes: “The ways the RNC and Project 2025 frame their approach to gender and sexuality diversity goes against what has been well-established in the research literature… Under the (previous) Trump administration, school climate declined for LGBTQ+ youth, and this is likely to recur during a second Trump presidency.”
In the second short civil rights brief, The Elections and Issues Around Racial and Ethnic Diversity, Kevin Lawrence Henry, Jr., an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, examines the Trump campaign and Project 2025 proposals from the point of view of racial justice: “(F)ederal educational provisions and regulations that are concerned with the enforcement of civil rights protections can positively impact the educational lives of students. For instance, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights enforces a variety of consent decrees, ranging from ensuring desegregation within school districts, to improving multilingual learner instruction, to addressing racial discrimination in student discipline… (Federal initiatives such as President Obama’s efforts to address discipline disparities that disproportionately impact Black and Latinx students is noteworthy. Federal guidance, interventions, and oversight that address racial inequity attends to institutional and organizational realities that stymie and limit educational opportunity, and in doing so gives meaning to educational equity and the unreached promises of a multiracial democracy.”
Henry continues: “Nevertheless, these initiatives are fragile…. During Donald Trump’s administration, movement away from race-conscious remedies for racism-caused harms intensified. For instance, the Trump administration rescinded Obama-era guidance on the reduction of suspensions and expulsions. Additionally, the Trump administration reduced the federal emphasis on enforcing Title VI protections for English Language Learners… and decreased Office of Civil Rights investigations into systemic discrimination… We need policies that explicitly aim to redress and counteract institutional and structural racism.”
Henry concludes: “Project 2025 and the RNC platform completely abandon a vision of a pluralistic, multicultural democracy. Focused on deregulation and the expansion of privatized education (which has historically been used to evade civil rights efforts and currently reproduces systemic racial inequity), these policy statements would significantly curtail and constrain regulatory civil rights enforcement in K-12 and higher education settings. Moreover, Project 2025 calls for the elimination of Head Start… (and) calls for rescinding the equity provision within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which specially aims to evaluate and address racial disproportionality in special education. Project 2025 calls for the redistribution of Title I funds (over $18 billion) as deregulated block grants to states, and then for the phasing out of these funds.. over a 10-year period… Project 2025 calls for the prosecution of entities committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This would be a fundamental disavowing of educational justice.”
The attack on public education embodied in the President-elect’s education plans is directed at federal policies, programs, and regulations designed to protect the most vulnerable among the roughly 50 million students served by public schools. Trump’s campaign and other politicians, however, have turned discussion of these complex policies that shape public education across the nation’s 13,318 public school districts into an attack on the public schools themselves and the teachers who work with our students. I believe that teachers’ work with students is not political. The goal is to make students feel authentically welcome so that they are able to learn.
Kids bring who they are to school, and it is responsibility of school staff to make each student feel included. Schools must also ensure that all students are physically safe, and safe from meanness and bullying. The late Mike Rose, a fine writer and a teacher of future teachers, reflected on what shapes a student’s experience of school: “We need to pay attention to the experience of school.” (Why School?, p. 34) “I’m especially interested in what opportunity feels like… What is the experience of opportunity? Certainly one feels a sense of possibility, of hope. But it is hope made concrete, specific, hope embedded in tools, or practices, or sequences of things to do—pathways to a goal. And all this takes place with people who interact with you in ways that affirm your hope.” (Why School?, p. 14)
