The fate regarding the United States’ Department of Education (DOE) has been in question since President Donald Trump was sworn into office.
The DOE is responsible for enforcing civil rights laws, providing support to students with disabilities, promoting equal educational opportunities, strengthening the educator workforce, and administering Federal Student Aid programs—namely the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
Among many executive orders signed, Executive Order “Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” was signed by Trump on January 29. This order coincides with his continuous aims to end Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts.
“In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,” the order reads. “Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination.”
The Trump administration’s latest move in ending DEI efforts in schools goes after schools for what it names “divisive ideologies” and “indoctrination.”
On February 27, the DOE launched a public portal, EndDEI.Ed.Gov, requesting that parents, students, teachers, and the broader community report practices of discrimination based on race or sex in publicly-funded K-12 schools.This move comes just before the February 28 deadline that the Trump administration had set for K-12 schools and universities to cease DEI practices, or risk losing federal funding.
“For years, parents have been begging schools to focus on teaching their kids practical skills like reading, writing, and math, instead of pushing critical theory, rogue sex education and divisive ideologies…” said the Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty, Tiffany Justice, in a press release by the DOE.
EndDEI poses a risk to certain courses such as Language and Gender and Ethnic Studies due to the topics taught which are now considered discriminatory according to the executive order. Under these practices, students would not be able to learn the curricula because of their focus on gender and race.