Trump asks Supreme Court to let him cancel grants to teachers

Boston Globe

26-03-2025

The Education Department last month sent grant recipients boilerplate form letters ending the funding, saying the recipients were engaged in activities 'that violate either the letter or purpose of federal civil rights law; that conflict with the department's policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; that are not free from fraud, abuse, or duplication; or that otherwise fail to serve the best interests of the United States.'
Advertisement
Judge Myong J. Joun of the US District Court in Massachusetts temporarily ordered the grants to remain available while he considered a suit brought by California and seven other states challenging the terminations.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
On Friday, the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, rejected a request from the Trump administration to pause Joun's order, saying the government's arguments were based on 'speculation and hyperbole.'
In temporarily blocking the cancellation of the grants, Joun said he sought to maintain the status quo. He wrote that if he failed to do so, 'dozens of programs upon which public schools, public universities, students, teachers, and faculty rely will be gutted.' On the other hand, he reasoned, if he did pause the Trump administration action, the groups would merely continue to receive funds that had been appropriated by Congress.
In the administration's emergency application in the Supreme Court, Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, said Joun's order was one of many lower-court rulings thwarting government initiatives.
'The aim is clear: to stop the executive branch in its tracks and prevent the administration from changing direction on hundreds of billions of dollars of government largesse that the executive branch considers contrary to the United States' interests and fiscal health,' she wrote.
She added, 'Only this court can right the ship — and the time to do so is now.'
Advertisement
The case followed the Trump administration's termination of more than $600 million in grants for teacher training in February, as part of its crackdown on efforts related to diversity and equity. The Education Department claimed the funding was being used 'to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies' like social justice activism and anti-racism.
It came amid broader upheaval in the department that reached a climax this month, when Trump instructed the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to begin shutting down the agency altogether, though it cannot be closed without the approval of Congress.
The raft of cuts to training grants had decimated two of the department's largest professional development programs, known as the Supporting Effective Educator Development program and the Teacher Quality Partnership Program.
The initiatives offered competitive grants that helped place teachers in underserved schools — like low-income or rural regions — and addressed teacher shortages. Among their goals was to develop a diverse educational workforce.
In New York, for example, officials said that public university systems had been granted more than $16 million to support students in graduating from teaching programs — who would then help to fill spots in tough-to-staff areas, such as math and special education.
The lawsuit filed this month challenging the cuts came from a coalition of eight attorneys general, including those for New York and Massachusetts. It argued that the cuts would destabilize both urban and rural school districts, forcing them to hire 'long-term substitutes, teachers with emergency credentials, and unlicensed teachers on waivers.'
'This will harm the quality of instruction and can lead to increased numbers of students falling short of national standards,' the attorneys general wrote.
Advertisement
If the cuts were allowed to continue, the group contended, public school students and their teachers-in-training would suffer 'immediate and irreparable harm.'
This article originally appeared in