Latest news with #U.S.EducationDepartment
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
U.S. Education Department launches civil rights investigation into Green Bay School District
The U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights has launched an investigation into the Green Bay School District after a January complaint alleged an elementary school discriminated against a White student based on his race. 'In America, we do not 'prioritize' students for educational access, nor do we judge their worth, on the basis of skin color. Schools must provide special needs students access to supportive educational resources on an equal footing and on the basis of need, not on the basis of race,' acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor said in a May 28 news release. In the complaint, the law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty alleged the district discriminated against Green Bay King Elementary parent Colby Decker's son by not providing him access to literacy resources because he was not a 'focus student,' which was defined as a First Nations, Black or Hispanic student in King's student success plan. The focus student language has since been changed. Decker's son has dyslexia, and she told WILL she requested he receive a one-on-one intervention. She said her son was put on a waiting list for reading interventions in April 2024 and was finally placed in a small group intervention last fall, which she said caused her son to fall behind. Decker and WILL allege the district violated Title VI, which prohibits racial and ethnic discrimination. The civil rights complaint also raised concerns about the way the district handled WILL's original complaint, saying the district's investigation was biased. The complaint also claimed the district didn't meet special education law needs relating to Decker's son's dyslexia, which they said would account for discrimination on the basis of disability. On May 28, OCR said it had opened a formal investigation into Green Bay based on the complaint. It will investigate whether the district violated Title VI, which prohibits racial and ethnic discrimination, and whether it failed to evaluate Decker's son as a student with disabilities, which it says is discrimination under federal law. "The district had many opportunities to change course and make clear it would be treating its students in a colorblind way, and they didn't do that," WILL legal counsel Cory Brewer said. "We really hope this investigation is eye-opening for the district, particularly for district leaders." Green Bay communications director Lori Blakeslee said the district hadn't yet received anything from OCR. Contact Green Bay education reporter Nadia Scharf at nscharf@ or on X at @nadiaascharf. This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Federal civil rights investigation launched into Green Bay Schools
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Fear and defiance are this Washington's response to Trump's education funding threats
(Photo by Getty Images) No one is certain yet how federal decisions under the Trump administration will affect both budgets and policies of Washington's public schools. But educators, parents and government officials in this Washington are tracking closely whether President Donald Trump makes good on his threats to cut funding to states that do not prove they have abandoned K-12 diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Fear, anger and defiance have been the response here so far. The fear runs deep. The defiance comes from the top: the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction or OSPI. Although most of the districts I reached out to for this story weren't interested in discussing their plans for navigating these issues, education consultant Erin Jones told me that at a recent meeting with King County superintendents, officials were worried. 'They are concerned about budget cuts. But they are most concerned about the uncertainty. That's the point of this administration: uncertainty. That leaves them in such a bad place,' Jones recalled. 'These leaders want to do right by their children and their staff.' The U.S. Education Department sent a letter to state education agencies in February, accusing schools of promoting diversity in a way that unfairly harmed white and Asian American students. In support of this statement, they cited a 2023 Supreme Court decision that banned using race as an element in college admissions. That case didn't mention K-12 schools, but that didn't stop the Trump administration from using it as a reason why Washington and other states shouldn't be providing extra academic support for students of color. In early April, the U.S. Education Department doubled down, with another letter. This one demanded proof that states were following their DEI orders. Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal's response reaffirmed this state's strong commitment to embracing its diversity and making sure every student gets the help they need. 'Recognition of our diversity is a cornerstone of public education. It makes us stronger, more civil, and it empowers groups of students who have historically been marginalized or denied equal opportunities,' Reykdal said in a statement. He confirmed that these efforts are paying off in higher graduation and college participation rates for everyone. Plus, Reykdal added, every student benefits from the diversity in our schools. 'Washington will not suppress its core values or cede our right to determine our own education system to the federal government,' he said. In just a few words, he underscored a key facet of American education: states, not the federal government, take the lead in determining what their children will learn in public schools. Reykdal's office continues to draw attention from the Trump administration. Later in April, the Department of Education said it would investigate OSPI over 'requiring school boards to adopt policies that allow males to participate in female sports and occupy female-only intimate facilities.' This followed the federal agency scrutinizing OSPI over how it handled a years-long controversy surrounding the gender-inclusion policy at the La Center School District in Clark County. Jones, the education consultant, said she hasn't met a leader yet who is not committed to continuing diversity, equity and inclusion work. Some are renaming it, opting instead for terms like 'community building.' Another consequence of Trump era rhetoric and policies that Jones has been hearing about is decreased attendance by Latino students. 'No matter what the principal has said that we're going to protect you from ICE, why should they trust you?' she asked. 'I think we're afraid for good reason,' Jones added. Trish Millines Dziko, executive director of the Technology Access Foundation, a Seattle-based nonprofit offering supplemental STEM education in public schools and after-school programs, has also heard that Latino attendance has dropped. And the parents of children who are showing up for school don't want them participating in field trips. So far, this is just anecdotal evidence. Detailed attendance data probably won't be available to the public until next year. Dziko believes the full impact of the Trump administration on education won't be understood for months or even years. 'There's a lot of anxiety,' said Dziko, who has overheard immigrant children as well as LGBTQ students and staff talking to each other. 'They're all very close to each other and they worry about each other. …I don't know if it's stopping education from happening. But you can hear the conversations between some of the kids.' After reaching out to about half the districts in the Puget Sound region, plus some in eastern Washington, only one was willing to put someone on the phone to talk to me. Dziko and others I talked to felt this lack of response was born out of fear. The state's largest school district is choosing to carry on and keep working to lift up every child from every background despite threats from the Trump administration. Seattle Public School's Black education program manager, Anita Koyier-Mwamba, pointed to Head Start office closures and the president's DEI orders as examples of factors fueling uncertainty. Still, she believes the difficulties should not stop educators from using this time as a teachable moment. 'It is really important to me that we recognize that history has left us a wonderful catalog of opportunities to explore.' And then she took a delightful path into American history and the young men like Thomas Jefferson who were so passionate about democracy but didn't do everything right 250 years ago, although they were trying to solve the problems of their time. Why does she want us to think about the 19- and 20-year-olds sitting around debating the birth of a nation? Because it's a good reminder that young people can think for themselves and should have an opportunity to do so. 'It is unjust not to give our young people the opportunity to … solve the problems of their time,' Koyier-Mwamba said. And that comes down to a discussion about justice that must account for the nation's past. This is American history, not diversity indoctrination: The enslavement of people kidnapped and brought here to work the land. The way we have treated the indigenous people before and after the United States became a country. How the Constitution treated enslaved people when the founders couldn't agree to take a better path. The Civil War and what happened to enslaved people afterward. Fifty years between giving white women and Black women the right to vote. 'Focusing on our shared humanity is an avenue to reconsider how we respond in these times of challenge,' Koyier-Mwamba said. Part of that is choosing to be optimistic, deciding to see the light in the darkness through American heroes like abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Similarly, Dziko sees an opportunity to rethink how we do things as a state and a nation. Making sure every student gets the education they need to succeed is not an impossible goal. Dziko believes, and I agree, that state dollars for education could be distributed in a way that focuses more on equity. 'Our kids deserve better,' Dziko said, adding that education reform is directly related to state budget reform because it will take more money to create a more equitable system. The 29-year-old Technology Access Foundation does not get federal grants, so Dziko is not concerned about backlash from the federal government. Where the Trump administration pushes against DEI programs because they say they unfairly advantage Black and Brown people, Dziko and I see racism. 'The whole thing has been reduced to, 'If you are Black, then you did not deserve the position you're in.' That's a very dangerous viewpoint,' she said. Unfortunately, this viewpoint isn't new. Dziko is worried about how far back we will go. Before the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that ruled racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional? 'I'm always the eternal optimist in my family, but I'm not this time around,' Dziko said. 'We're going backwards,' she added. Jones is also feeling pessimistic. 'They want to make America in their image, and their image is white straight men,' said Jones. 'They've done a really good job of making everything DEI that they just don't like,' she said. 'I've really been grieving.' Like Dziko, while she rejects the Republican vision for education, she is also not satisfied with the status quo. 'Republicans say burn it all down, it all sucks. That is not a strategy. The Democrats don't have a vision,' she said. 'Let's all talk about it. So we have something to activate us. Just saying I don't want this is not enough. We need people with vision who are imagining a better way forward.'
The Hill
18-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump can't stop schools from teaching the truth
The Trump administration is seeking to replace education with indoctrination in America's K-12 public schools, demanding schools paint a fairy tale picture of the American story that focuses only on the good while ignoring the bad and the ugly. We owe our children better. Alarmingly, the administration wants to withhold billions of dollars in federal aid to schools unless they bow to its dictatorial demands. An executive order signed by President Trump, titled 'Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,' says that schools must instill in students 'a patriotic admiration for our incredible nation and the values for which we stand.' It denounces schools that teach 'anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies.' The order gives the federal government dangerously wide latitude to censor what it considers impermissible educational content. Another Trump executive order on schools denounces 'gender ideology' and 'the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.' It is being used by the Trump administration to demand that transgender students be barred from athletic teams and restrooms that align with their gender identity. In addition, a memo sent by the U.S. Education Department to state education officials in April threatened to cut off federal aid to public schools unless the schools end their diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI programs, which the memo claimed are illegal even though no court has issued such a ruling. Republicans have long called for greater local and state control of public schools, and Trump signed an executive order in March claiming to 'return authority over education to the states and local communities.' But the Trump administration is acting like a national school board, seeking to exercise unprecedented control over how and what students are taught in an effort to sweep our nation's flaws under the rug. Fortunately, three federal judges have ruled separately that the Education Department cannot block aid to schools, rulings the department is expected to appeal. Teachers unions, civil rights groups and 19 Democratic state attorneys general have all filed lawsuits seeking to stop the aid cuts. Ironically, while denouncing indoctrination by the left, the Trump administration seeks to subject students to its own right-wing indoctrination, filled with false claims about an America without flaws — an America that has never existed. This propaganda amounts to educational child abuse and malpractice. Reality can be disturbing. But schools need to teach students about the world as it really is, giving them a truthful accounting of the past and present to enable them to recognize the challenges America faces and learn from injustices and mistakes 'in order to form a more perfect union,' as the Constitution puts it. Even our founders knew this union called America was flawed because it was formed by flawed men. It is simply dishonest to whitewash America's flaws, including slavery, the seizure of land from Native Americans, systemic racism and sexism, religious bigotry and anti-gay and anti-transgender bias. It is also dishonest to claim we live in a colorblind society where all forms of prejudice have disappeared and to deny that centuries of inequality still hold back marginalized groups. It is equally false to claim that efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in workplaces and schools are an illegal racist attack on white Americans, as President Trump has repeatedly charged. DEI programs do not tear anyone down — they simply open the door to the American Dream a little wider for groups shut out in the past and enable additional qualified people to compete for open positions. It is a blatant falsehood, perpetrated by those who claim to want to make our country 'great again,' that DEI requires employers to hire unqualified people of color and women. Germany and South Africa offer valuable lessons on teaching students ugly historical truths. Rather than trying to cover up or distort the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, German schools are required to teach students an accurate account of this horror. Similarly, South Africa requires schools to teach how European colonialists enslaved Black people there between 1652 and 1834 and how the white minority continued to oppress Blacks and deprive them of most human rights until the racist apartheid regime was replaced by democratic rule in 1994. Some Nazi death camps and South African prisons have been preserved as museums, so that their existence will never be forgotten. Educating young people about these atrocities is vital, because as philosopher George Santayana wrote in 1905: 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' We send our kids to school to be educated — not to be brainwashed with false and misleading lessons. Dictatorships like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Cuba infuse education with propaganda and indoctrination in schools, censoring content the government dislikes, limiting academic freedom and promoting a favored ideology. America should never emulate these totalitarian states. The truth is not a partisan issue. No presidential administration should try to put a political spin on the way schools instruct students about our history and about life today. If the Republican-controlled Congress will not halt the Trump administration's efforts to cut funding to schools that refuse to substitute propaganda for education, the courts should and probably will do so. A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor and former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chicago Public Schools' Black Student Success Plan Under Investigation Over DEI
A program created to improve Black student achievement, discipline and sense of belonging in Chicago Public Schools is under investigation by the Trump administration. The U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights announced on April 29 that the district's Black Student Success Plan violates federal law because it discriminates against students on the basis of race. The plan, released in February, outlines strategies over the next five years to improve Black student's daily learning experiences and life outcomes. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Stacy Davis Gates, Chicago Teachers Union president, said in a statement Tuesday that the plan was developed to address the 'man-made educational achievement gap' for Black students caused by inequitable policies such as redlining. 'We expect CPS to stand up against this baseless investigation — and we call on our city and state leaders to take real action to protect our students and schools,' Davis Gates said. An Illinois law signed in 2023 required the Chicago Board of Education to create a Black Student Achievement Committee and develop a plan to 'bring about academic parity between Black children and their peers.' The plan was based on the group's recommendations, which include providing comprehensive resources for Black students' academic and social-emotional needs and partnering with historically Black colleges and universities to create a teacher pipeline. The plan's main goals include doubling the number of Black male educators, reducing out-of-school suspensions and expulsions for Black students by 40% and increasing Black history and culture in classrooms. Related LAUSD Overhauls $120 Million Black Students Program After Activists File Complaint The investigation into the plan is based on a complaint by conservative Virginia-based advocate Defending Education, which targeted a similar program last year in the Los Angeles Unified School District called the Black Student Achievement Plan. A district spokesperson said Thursday that Los Angeles Unified resolved the complaint by opening the plan's services to all students. The Education Department said in a press release Tuesday that the Chicago plan violates federal law by focusing 'on remedial measures only for Black students, despite acknowledging that Chicago students of all races struggle academically.' It's the latest move by the Trump administration to eliminate school diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Craig Trainor, the department's acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement that the administration won't allow federal funds to be used 'in this pernicious and unlawful manner.' The department previously said government funds were at risk for states and school districts that didn't agree to end DEI programs. Last month, federal judges blocked the department from withholding federal funds because of DEI. A Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said Thursday that the district will not comment on pending or ongoing investigations.
Int'l Business Times
06-05-2025
- Business
- Int'l Business Times
Education Department Urges Colleges to Aid Student Loan Borrowers as Collections Resume
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department issued a "Dear Colleague Letter" to colleges and universities Monday, reinforcing their role in supporting student loan borrowers under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The guidance, released as involuntary collections on federal student loans resume after a pandemic-era pause, underscores institutions' responsibility to help graduates manage repayment amid rising college costs. The department emphasized that while borrowers are primarily responsible for repaying loans, colleges play a key role in improving repayment outcomes. Institutions are urged to ensure former students understand their obligations and can access accounts for resources. The department will publish nonrepayment rates by institution on the Federal Aid Data Center later this month, using College Scorecard data to promote accountability. "As we begin to help defaulted borrowers back into repayment, we must also fix a broken higher education finance system that has put upward pressure on tuition rates without ensuring that colleges and universities are delivering a high-value degree to students," said Education Secretary Linda McMahon. "For too long, insufficient transparency and accountability structures have allowed U.S. universities to saddle students with enormous debt loads without paying enough attention to whether their own graduates are truly prepared to succeed in the labor market." Under the Higher Education Act, colleges with high cohort default rates risk losing eligibility for federal aid, including Pell Grants and loans. The department called for proactive outreach to delinquent or defaulted borrowers before June 30, 2025, to address loans not in deferment or forbearance. The resumption of involuntary collections affects approximately 195,000 defaulted borrowers, who will receive 30-day notices from the Treasury Department starting Monday. These notices indicate federal benefits, including June checks, will be subject to the Treasury Offset Program. By summer, all 5.3 million defaulted borrowers will face administrative wage garnishment. The Federal Student Aid office is bolstering support with extended call center hours and increased capacity to guide borrowers toward income-driven repayment plans, loan rehabilitation, or affordable payments. Resources are available at Guaranty agencies are also authorized to resume collections on Federal Family Education Loan Program loans, with all actions adhering to legal requirements for notice and repayment opportunities. The department's guidance reflects a broader push for transparency in higher education, leveraging repayment data to ensure colleges prioritize student success and financial literacy. Institutions' engagement with borrowers will be critical to maintaining federal funding eligibility. Originally published on University Herald
