Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Executive orders on education

 This afternoon, Donald Trump signed an executive order

...to prohibit federal funds from going to K-12 public schools that teach critical race theory (CRT) or gender issues.  

Politico had "it's coming" coverage earlier today which you can find here.  

This is of course the same sort of "we piled a lot of words on top of each other" thing we saw earlier this week with the Office of Management and Budget funding freeze. 

I would say the questions this opens are two:

  1. How are they going to enforce it?
    Public education in the United States (as, amusingly, Trump himself as noted) largely the province of the state and then local districts. The federal government doesn't have that much power, or, relatively speaking, that much money with which to get schools to do much of anything. Also, most of that money--think of the title grants or IDEA--is tied directly to federal legislation that requires particular things IN THE LAW to be done or happen for the money to be distributed. He can't just make up new rules for the money.

    The one concern I have, which I think I have flagged here before, is the possible weaponization of the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. OCR has investigatory powers, and yesterday, they opened an investigation into the Denver Public Schools over a gender-neutral bathroom that that was put in due to student request.* If they're starting that, we could see what essentially is ongoing harassment of those who are protecting student rights. 
  2. How much are states/districts/schools going to obey in advance?
    As I said the week of the election, the empowerment of people who do want to discriminate against others is one of the larger dangers to schools under Trump. The people in power are coming after those historically disempowered, and now you can, too!
    Education also tends to be a very compliance based system--and not only for students!--and state agencies, districts, and schools are going to have to resist the tendency to just go along with what the person seemingly in charge says. 
Of course, this also doesn’t look like closing the Department of Education, either, does it. 
And yes, for sure, expect lawsuits on this one, too. 


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*I suspect the story is here: "at least one East High parent had raised concerns at a Denver school board meeting."
Hmmhm.

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