Some trainings guided teachers to ‘interrupt racial marginalization and oppression of students.’
The U.S. Education Department on Monday said it has canceled $600 million in grants for educator training programs that promote “divisive ideologies.”
The grants had been awarded to teacher preparation programs that trained future educators in what the department said were “inappropriate and unnecessary topics,” such as critical race theory, which promotes the fundamental framework view that racism is embedded in all institutions and aspects of society; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and social justice activism. Some of the defunded programs also included race-based teacher recruitment and staffing strategies, according to the department.
The department provided examples of the defunded training programs, including those that required educators to acknowledge “systemic inequities” like racism and “critically reassess” their own teaching practices. Others offered professional development workshops on “Building Cultural Competence,” “Dismantling Racial Bias,” and “Centering Equity in the Classroom.”
Some initiatives guided teachers to “interrupt racial marginalization and oppression of students.” There were also programs promoting an “abolitionist pedagogy” which, according to Bettina L. Love, the professor who coined the term, applies a “critical race lens” to classrooms and encourages teachers to organize marches and boycotts against their colleagues perceived as “racist, homophobic, or Islamophobic.”
The decision to cut these grants aligns with the broader cost-cutting measures led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory body led by Elon Musk, and with President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to dismantle DEI initiatives across the federal government.
Trump on Jan. 21 signed an executive order directing government educational institutions to end all DEI efforts.
“Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,” the order read. “The Federal Government is charged with enforcing our civil-rights laws. The purpose of this order is to ensure that it does so by ending illegal preferences and discrimination.”
By Bill Pan
