A DEI Standoff in K-12 Education

President Donald Trump signs a document in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Feb. 4, 2025. Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo

This text appeared in the ‘Top Story’ email newsletter sent on Feb. 22, 2025.

Public school districts across the nation keep doubling down on DEI, even if it could cost them millions.

This is happening despite President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that bars federal funding for schools and universities that promote DEI. Education reform was among his main campaign promises.

Examples of these programs include mandatory diversity training for teachers and administrators, affinity groups or extra help reserved for Black students only, and curriculums where the desired intent is to teach students that America is inherently a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, or transphobic nation.

“Merit has been sacrificed on the altar of equity,” Parents Defending Education President and Founder Nicole Neily told a House panel during a Feb. 5 hearing on the state of U.S. education. “We are witnessing the Sovietization of schools in real-time.”

Through a November school board resolution, this is how Chicago Public Schools (CPS) responded to the election results:

“Whereas the 2024 presidential election may have caused fear, concern, confusion, sadness, anger, or anxiety in CPS staff, students, and their families…. CPS is committed to ensuring students have access to a high-quality, well-rounded, rigorous, and joyful education. To achieve this, CPS continuously works to ensure that students see themselves reflected in the curriculum by incorporating LGBTQIA+, disabled, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other historical figures into its lessons. CPS also follows the State of Illinois’ mandate to teach LGBTQIA+ history in its public schools.”

Here are some other examples:

The Cambridge, Mass., Public School District proclaims its commitment to “dismantling structures of white privilege” on the welcoming screen of its website. Those words alone could jeopardize the district’s $4.75 million in federal funding.

The Miami-Dade district in Florida provides an online guide for strengthening gender-affirming ideology in communities. Its glossary uses preferred terms, such as “school facilities,” instead of bathrooms or locker rooms, to imply a greater sense of inclusivity.

In Washington, D.C., a public school district where the majority of students, faculty, and administrative staff are persons of color, employees must complete training on the impact of racial trauma and white supremacy. The district also engages in “restorative practices” for disruptive students, an alternative to traditional disciplinary measures for the sake of racial equity.

Similarly, Clark County Public Schools (metro Las Vegas area) requires its employees to complete annual training “to understand their own cultural identity, biases, and experiences of privilege and marginalization.”

In New York City, the nation’s largest school district, strategic planning has been centered around race-based ideology to the point where its Office of DEI required administrators to re-interview for their jobs.

New York City public schools will receive $2.2 billion in federal grants this year. Collectively, the nation’s five largest districts will receive more than $5 billion.

Jonathan Butcher, senior research fellow for education policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said that any given school district, large or small, spends more than $75,000 on one-day faculty DEI training sessions.

The roots of race-based ideological indoctrination in public schools, he said, date back to disparity impact theory in the 1960s and 70s. President Barack Obama made Critical Race Theory a public policy. In the past five years, CRT was exacerbated by the George Floyd murder, Black Lives Matter protests, and the election of Joe Biden.

“It promotes the idea that race explains any disparities in public and private life,” Butcher told The Epoch Times, “but really, it has become a violation of Civil Rights.”

Despite the billions of dollars spent on DEI training and administration in corporate America and education, there’s no evidence that it improves attitudes, behavior, or performance in schools or workplaces, he added.

Moreover, the recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress report shows that math and reading scores in U.S. public schools continue to decline.

Opponents of DEI and ideological indoctrination in public schools say the reprioritization of reading, writing, math, science, and history is long overdue. But proponents are bracing for a four-year fight to keep the Biden administration’s educational priorities intact.

Janai Nelson, president of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, calls attacks on DEI an “America-last policy” and accuses parental rights organizations of peddling “indoctrination by ignorance.”

“Commitment to racism may be lucrative to the billionaires running the country,” Nelson told a House panel on Feb. 5.