Schools Scramble in Response to Letter Calling on Them to Do Away with DEI

Last week the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent out a letter to all 50 states telling them they had two weeks to rid their schools of DEI initiatives or face investigations and potentially cuts to their federal funding. Here’s a sample of what the letter said:

The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions. The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.

As you would expect, states are still responding to the letter, partly because blue states don’t want to go along with this and partly because two weeks is not much time for educations bureaucrats to do anything at all. Cynthia Jackson-Hammond, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, gave an interview to NPR in which she rejected the fundamental premise of the letter.

Fadel: Is structural and systemic racism that minority communities face in the United States, particularly Black Americans, a false premise as this letter states?

Jackson-Hammond: If the premises were false, then there would be no need to have these kinds of support systems for all students. We have to go back and look historically at what America has done to alienate or to keep students of certain race or certain culture from the educational experience. If it were never identified as such, then the need for diversity, equity and inclusion would not have been needed.

Fadel: Describe to me some of the diversity, equity and inclusion programs, what they do and what their goal is. If they’re not around, what happens?

Jackson-Hammond: Too often we focus just on diversity. And the second part of diversity, equity and inclusion is equity, which means fairness. How do you present policies, practices and procedures that are fair to everyone, including faculty, staff and students?

It sounds to me like education bureaucrats plan to fight the contents of the letter. Indeed, some states are already suggesting they plan to drag their heels. For instance, in Michigan:

Michigan isn’t planning to abandon diversity, equity and inclusion programs in K-12 public schools just yet, despite a Trump administration order to get rid of them by the end of the month or risk losing federal funding…

State Superintendent Michael Rice said the Michigan Department of Education “continues to support diversity in literature, comprehensive history instruction, and broad recruitment to Grow Your Own programs for students and support staff to become teachers.” He said reviewing the letter “will take time.” 

The same report makes clear that DEI material is already rampant in Michigan public schools.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District “is looking into our practices and lessons to make sure they are anti-racist, include students’ voices, and relate to their experiences, history, and lives”, according to the district’s website. 

Ann Arbor Public Schools has an “equity plan” that centers dignity, belonging and well-being.

A professor at USC says schools across the country are scrambling to find ways to continue DEI efforts without losing their federal funding.

Shaun Harper, a professor of education and public policy at University of Southern California, said the decision has been highly stressful for education officials. 

“It has required them to scramble to determine ways to maintain their commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion without losing their federal funding. So right now, all across America, including here in California, millions of educators are literally scrambling to figure out how to balance those two things,” Harper said…

“The next two weeks ahead will be chaos in our nation’s schools and on college campuses, as many educational leaders, out of fear, will go and scrub their websites and attempt to rename programs and services,” he said 

I think he’s probably right that what will happen in the short term is a lot of rebranding and scrubbing of websites. The DEI efforts won’t disappear but public mention of them will. This is what we’ve seen universities do in response to laws passed by states limiting DEI initiatives. If the Trump administration really wants to rid public schools of DEI it is probably going to have to follow up the DOE letter with investigations.

Here’s a local news report about Portland State University whose director of Global Diversity and Inclusion claims the school is already in compliance. Uh-huh, I bet it is.