This article was written by Aziah Siid for Word In Black
When President Donald Trump signed a barrage of controversial executive orders rolling back civil rights protections and racial equity policies, he didn’t explicitly address education. But he did set the tone for what schools and education policy leaders should expect during the next four years.
That includes an end to diversity in teacher hiring, a green light for immigration officers to raid public schools, no government protection for LGBTQ+ students and no pushback for districts that ban books or restrict teaching Black history.
Just hours after taking the oath of office, Trump signed dozens of his executive orders and rescinded almost 80 orders signed by the Biden administration. Many of these executive orders have already been implemented, while others will likely be challenged in court and overturned. The overall effect, however, signaled a decisive break with former President Joe Biden’s administration in education.
For example, after Trump signed the order titled, “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” the Education Department almost immediately took several steps to dismantle its Biden-era DEI programs and practices.
“Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil rights laws,” according to the executive order. “They also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
Almost immediately, the Education Department put employees charged with leading DEI initiatives on paid administrative leave but did not clarify how many staffers had been suspended, according to USA Today. The paper reported that department officials also canceled millions of dollars in contracts related to DEI training and services.
The Department of Education announced nearly a dozen new political appointees for top leadership positions — including several who worked for Linda McMahon, Trump’s education secretary nominee, when she ran the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, according to USA Today.
The potential educational impact can range from districts no longer feeling the need to hire Black teachers, or teaching American history that includes honest accounts of slavery and Jim Crow.
Ending DEI programs in public schools also undoes the Biden administration’s work challenging districts that restrict or ban books.
When the order was signed, the department’s Office for Civil Rights Enforcement dismissed 11 formal complaints about book bans in local districts and retracted guidance that removing books may violate civil rights laws, according to a DOE press release. OCR also dismissed six other pending cases.
Reversed Protection for LGBTQ+ Students
In another executive order, titled Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, Trump officially declared he will recognize just two sexes: male and female.
“My Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male,” according to the order.
The order effectively dismantles Biden-era protections for K-12 transgender students, ending a long struggle by parents who want schools to address their children by their preferred pronouns and names. While local schools still have the option to respect students’ wishes, parents no longer have Education Department protection if a school decides not to do so, and a school risks losing federal funding if it ignores Trump’s order.
Education Week reports that the executive order directs the U.S. attorney general to instruct government agencies that civil rights laws that ban discrimination based on sex —including Title IX, the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination at federally funded schools — no longer apply in cases involving sexual orientation or gender identity.
The move likely will do little to reverse the spike in calls to LGBTQ+ youth crisis centers, a rise linked to Trump’s election. In a statement, Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, said the executive order wasn’t a surprise, “and for many communities, these (actions) are not new.”
“Lucky for us, we sit on the shoulders of leaders who have faced tremendous obstacles and uncertainties, for generations,” he said.
Immigration Officials Can Make Arrest at Schools
Prior to Trump returning to office, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol agents had to “sensitive locations,” including places of worship, hospitals, and schools, when conducting enforcement activities like making arrests. But the Trump administration overturned the 13-year internal policy that protected students from being pulled out of their classrooms, with the fear of themselves or their parents being deported.
Kalyn Belsha, a reporter for Chalkbeat, told NPR that some parents in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles have kept their children home from school. In contrast, the schools themselves have prepared for the possibility of ICE agents knocking at their doors.
“They’re preparing for the possibility that things could be happening outside the school while families are dropping their children off or potentially waiting at their bus stop,” she said. “But then also, what would they do if an agent actually knocked on the door and said, ‘I would like to come in potentially to talk to a staff member or a parent or a child?’”
She told the network about an incident in Chicago when “some federal agents showed up at a school asking to come in to interview an 11-year-old who had posted an anti-Trump video on TikTok.” The agents said they were with the Department of Homeland Security, but “the school was confused and said, ‘No, you cannot come in.’”
It turned out that the officers were Secret Service agents, the school activated protocols to protect the student and sent the agents away because they did not have the proper paperwork to interview the child. But the situation could have easily gone the other way, Belsha told NPR.
“I think that’s the kind of example of, even if it isn’t an ICE agent, [Trump’s elimination of sensitive location protections] creates all kinds of chaos for these chool and for the school communities,” she said.