Trump’s Education Department is backing away from addressing civil rights for Black students
WASHINGTON (AP) — For generations, the federal government has civil rights laws It aims to address historic, systemic discrimination against black people and other people of color. The Justice Department pressured schools to desegregate. The Department of Education worked to promote equal opportunity and held schools accountable for racial prejudice.
But under the Trump administration, efforts to address deep-rooted inequities for students of color are viewed as discrimination against white students. Programs that have long withstood legal scrutiny now quickly become ” illegal DEI ” – diversity, equity and inclusion – by the White House. Schools that did not comply faced threats to their funding and, in some cases, lost federal grants.
Civil rights lawyers describe the administration’s actions as a complete reversal of legal history.
“This literally subverts the intent of civil rights legislation, harming not just Black students and students of color, but entire school communities,” said Michael Pillera, director of educational equity issues at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It is disconnected from the true history of our country and not connected to the reality of life in this country.”
The U.S. government has initiated investigations or participated in lawsuits regarding a wide range of efforts to resolve these problems. racial inequality. The Justice Department is investigating programs to increase the number of black teachers in Rhode Island and Iowa. Grants to districts to train teachers or hire school mental health workers have been halted, citing diversity in hiring.
Programs that receive federal funding must comply with the law prohibiting discrimination based on race, the Department of Education said in a statement.
“Meeting student needs and complying with the law are not irreconcilable duties. Advocates and educators need not stress if they comply with the law,” department spokeswoman Amelia Joy said.
The Trump administration investigated Chicago Public Schools and withheld more than $20 million when the district refused to end the Black Student Achievement Program, which was intended to increase access to advanced classes for Black students and reduce overly harsh discipline.
Complaints against programs aimed at addressing inequities gain new attention
A similar effort to close racial achievement gaps in Los Angeles is under the same pressure.
The Los Angeles Unified School District created the Black Student Success Plan following increased student activism following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. Supports schools with extra teachers, counselors and curriculum on Black history.
Originally, the district selected schools based in part on the number of Black students enrolled. Defending Education, a Virginia-based conservative group, filed a complaint with the Department of Education in 2023 alleging discrimination against non-Black students. The district has emphasized that all students can participate, saying it will no longer consider black participation and will instead focus only on metrics such as high absenteeism and low test scores.
Following the changes, the Ministry of Education said in 2024 that it had seen no evidence of violations. However, when Defending Education filed a complaint again this year, the ministry Civil Rights Office launched an investigation.
Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal officer at Defending Education, said she refiled the complaint after district leaders said the program had not changed materially despite the new criteria.
“Our goal is not to make L.A. Unified a target, but instead to make sure that when people say the programs are desegregating, they actually keep their word,” Perry said.
LAUSD said in a written statement that its programs comply with state and federal laws and are open to all students.
Dorsey High School junior Makeda Walker-Deen said the program supported her in a variety of ways throughout high school.
A program advisor referred him to college-preparatory programs, which made it possible for him to visit the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford universities to which he was considering applying. The psychologists and social workers he contacted helped him overcome the pressure and anxiety.
“I think the things that a lot of critics are saying are very unreasonable,” he said. “They’re saying that a program intended to help black students, students of other races, is discriminatory. We’ve been discriminated against in school systems basically our entire lives.”
LAUSD has seen signs of impact. In recent state tests, Black students in the district performed better than the average Black student in California.
“When you provide teachers and school staff with the knowledge and skills to help your lowest-performing students, everyone wins,” said Tyrone Howard, a UCLA education professor who advises BSAP.
Organizers worry that the crackdown on the program will slow efforts to address inequities for Black students.
“Where is the uproar about the failures of the public education system for Black children?” Christian Flagg, director of youth organizing at the Community Coalition, which lobbied for the establishment of BSAP, said: “We’ve had this group of students at the bottom for too long, these huge gaps for too long. But when we do something to fix that, a problem arises.”
Justice Department aims for separate LA program
The federal government’s pivot in its approach to civil rights in schools has taken various forms under President Donald Trump.
Department of Justice releases school districts by court order separation plans dating back to the Civil Rights Movement and describing them as outdated and burdensome. And the Education Department has cut funding from some districts that used it to create magnet schools aimed at being more diverse.
The Trump administration has repeatedly cited a broad interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision in correspondence discouraging districts’ diversity programs. positive actionThis prevented colleges and universities from directly considering race in admissions.
Although this decision relates only to admissions, the administration notified schools last winter that any discriminatory evaluation based on race was unconstitutional. a federal court was shot That guidance remained in effect last year, but advocates say schools can still preemptively end equity programs to avoid federal scrutiny.
In Los Angeles, the Justice Department tried to end yet another racial equality effort.
In the 1970s, courts ordered restitution for zoned schools. The case led to a brief period in which Black students and white students were bused to different schools. More permanent programs included the district’s magnet schools and a special designation for “Predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, or Other Non-English” schools.
The program, known as PHBAO, offers smaller class sizes and additional parent-teacher conferences when 70% of the students allocated to that school are of color. The vast majority of area schools are proficient.
In January, the conservative 1776 Project Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging the designation, describing it as “a blatant program of discrimination against a new minority: white students.” The following month, the Ministry of Justice filed its own complaint and requested to join the case.
“LAUSD’s desegregation program has outlived its usefulness to the point of being unconstitutional,” an assistant U.S. attorney said in a news release.
Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney who represented black children in a Los Angeles desegregation case years ago, said decades of inequality show that’s not true.
“Those who oppose desegregation have always said, ‘Stop desegregating and we’ll fund these schools,'” Rosenbaum said. “You know, we’re still waiting for that to happen.”
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