Education Dept launches widespread civil rights probe: A look at what the agency does as Trump eyes shutdown

Yahoo

14-03-2025

The Department of Education (DoEd) is launching discrimination investigations into 45 universities for allegedly engaging in "race-exclusionary practices" within their scholarship and graduate programs.
"The Department is working to reorient civil rights enforcement to ensure all students are protected from illegal discrimination," Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said of the newly launched investigations. "Students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment, not prejudged by the color of their skin. We will not yield on this commitment."
The DoEd enforces nondiscrimination policies in federally funded schools through its Office for Civil Rights (OCR). As cuts are made to the department, the OCR will continue to "investigate complaints and vigorously enforce federal civil rights laws," Madi Biedermann, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications at the Department of Education, said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital.
Other main facets of the department include overseeing some funding, managing student loans, financial aid, and enforcing nondiscrimination policies in schools, while most education itself is dealt with at the state level.
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The department acknowledges that "education is primarily a state and local responsibility in the United States," with about 92% of all school funding coming from non-federal sources.
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President Donald Trump has been making significant cuts to the department as part of his goal to eventually close it "so that the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, can run education." But the administration has said that the cuts that have been made "will not directly impact students and families."
"President Trump's goal is to cut federal bureaucracy and return education authority to the states because the dollars and decision-making should be closest to students," Savannah Newhouse, a Department of Education spokesperson, told Fox News Digital. "Despite misconceptions, the Department of Education does not control school curricula, decide teacher pay, set who qualifies for student aid and how much they receive, operate schools, or serve as the primary source of funding for schools."
Newhouse added the department seeks "to reduce bureaucratic barriers in education, the federal government will continue to be a partner to provide best practices, investigate discrimination, and ensure states have the tools necessary to help our nation's students succeed."
One of the largest offices within the department is Federal Student Aid (FSA), which manages the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and provides about $120.8 billion in grants or loans to students each year, the department says.
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The Trump administration recently cut nearly half the workforce at the DoEd. Yet, "[n]o employees working on the FAFSA, student loan servicing, and Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title funds — including formula and discretionary grants programs — were impacted," Biedermann said in a statement.
In its early years, the department made specific requirements when allocating funding to schools, such as requiring higher education institutions to offer a campus drug and alcohol abuse prevention program under the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, which was passed in 1989.
When it comes to federal funds, a contribution of about 8% to education funding, the allocation of some money tends to vary by administration.
A recent study previously reported by Fox News Digital found that under former President Joe Biden, the DoEd spent $1 billion on grants advancing DEI in hiring. The Biden administration reportedly spent $489,883,797 on grants for race-based hiring, $343,337,286 on general DEI programming and $169,301,221 on DEI-based mental health training and programming, according to a report by Parents Defending Education, a right-leaning nonprofit.
Meanwhile, in 2025, the Trump administration slashed hundreds of millions in the department's funding for DEI practices. The president warned that any federally-funded institutions of higher education practicing DEI initiatives could lose their federal dollars.
"The federal government provides 10% of the money, but with it effectively sets more than half of policy for public schools," Max Eden, a senior fellow specializing in education at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), told Fox News Digital.
"If the Department were cut, the federal financial contribution would likely remain stable, but schools would be fundamentally more free to govern themselves according to local priorities and values."
The department, however, does not develop curriculum requirements, which are left to the state and local school boards to decide.
In Oklahoma, since 2024, all public schools are required to incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments into their curricula for grades 5-10.
Meanwhile, in 2016, the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) set health education standards for public schools in the state that required children in kindergarten and first grade to learn that "there are many ways to express gender."
Additionally, the department does not accredit universities, meaning it does not determine whether a school meets a certain level of education standards to receive federal funding.
"The federal government does not control education — the states do, local school boards do. This is about opportunity," McMahon told Fox News' Laura Ingraham amid the workforce cuts. "That is why so many people are so mad about it, because they're just taking opportunity away from kids who don't have it."
Fox News Digital reached out to the DoEd for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News Digital's Taylor Penley, Greg Wehner, Jamie Joseph and Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.Original article source: Education Dept launches widespread civil rights probe: A look at what the agency does as Trump eyes shutdown