I know what it means to be treated as a problem rather than a student. My path to graduating from high school relied on protections that President Donald Trump’s policies are now making it harder for students to receive. These protections aren’t theoretical; in my own life, they were what made it possible for me to graduate and eventually even transfer to an Ivy League school.
I’m only here because someone, somewhere, decided that equity in education mattered—that civil rights mattered.
That moment came for me in my sophomore year of high school. As a Hispanic student who had recently transferred from a diverse, melting-pot district to a predominantly white and affluent one, I felt like an outsider from day one. My racial and cultural isolation was unmistakable. By sophomore year, relentless bullying drove me to start skipping class. While a classmate in a similar situation was quietly granted home instruction, I was threatened with truancy charges. It wasn’t until legal counsel intervened that the school finally offered me the same home-based instruction plan it had easily provided to a more privileged peer.
With the Trump administration rolling back anti-discrimination policies and civil rights enforcement, I worry that districts will be even more likely to deny students like me equal access to educational support.
Since Trump’s return to office, his education agenda doesn’t read to me as chaos but, rather, a deliberate attack on the rights and resources of the nation’s most vulnerable students. If you’re a teacher, administrator, or policymaker reading this, you’re likely already feeling its effects.
In Trump’s second term, his administration has quickly moved to redefine public education as a tool of political control rather than a system for equal opportunity. Trump has attacked diversity initiatives in favor of so-called merit-based neutrality. But neutrality, in a system built on inequality, is not neutral—it protects the very imbalance it claims to ignore.
Trump’s pledge to reshape accreditation standards for higher education further reveals his desire to reward ideological loyalty and punish resistance. It sends a dangerous message to all education institutions: Political alignment matters more than student outcomes.
And that message is already reaching K–12 classrooms. The Trump administration is pressuring teachers to avoid discussions of race, gender, or systemic injustice; banning books from classrooms; and slashing funding for teacher-training programs associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Under the guise of “ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling,” the president has already directed the U.S. Department of Education to punish states for promoting inclusion.
Yet, in a separate executive order signed just two months later, the administration claimed that the Education Department represents “bureaucratic overreach” and called for “returning control” to states and parents. Following this order, the department launched a reduction-in-force that eliminated roughly half its office for civil rights, among many other layoffs. (A federal judge has since blocked the layoffs and ordered those staff members reinstated, but the administration is already appealing.) The targets of these layoffs reveal the administration’s objective isn’t a good-faith bid to devolve authority—significant authority was already returned to the states via the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act nearly a decade ago—but rather a targeted assault on students’ civil rights protections.
None of this is accidental. The United States has a long history of using education policy to consolidate power and discipline dissent, as renowned historian Elizabeth Hinton documents in From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (Harvard University Press, 2017). Trump’s current blueprint continues that tradition, though under a new guise.
Take, for example, the administration’s rollback of guidance intended to protect students of color from disproportionate disciplinary practices. In April, Trump issued an executive order to reinstate so-called “common sense” school discipline policies by overturning federal protections meant to reduce bias in how schools punish students.
Trump claims the move is about rooting out “discriminatory equity ideology,” but decades of research, including a 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, show that ignoring racial context in school discipline deepens inequity.
The weaponization of education policy does not stop at discipline or curriculum. Also in April, the Trump administration announced it would halt $1 billion in federal mental health grants authorized by Congress after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. These grants helped districts hire counselors, social workers, and school psychologists to address the growing mental health crisis among children and teens.
Educators, school leaders, and policymakers can’t afford to treat these policy shifts as just more partisan noise. We need district leaders who will advocate equity even when it’s politically unpopular. We need teachers who feel empowered and protected to teach the truth. We need policymakers who understand that defending public education is defending democracy.
I’m the outcome of what’s possible when public schools are resourced, not surveilled—and when students like me refuse to be written off. I’m a product of what can happen when education is seen as a right, not a reward, when civil rights are enforced, not erased.
Trump’s first several months in office reveal a deliberate attempt to reshape education into something narrower, meaner, and more loyal. This isn’t about test scores or subject matter; it’s about power. And if we let that go unchecked, we’re not just surrendering our schools. We’re surrendering the next generation’s capacity to question, to lead, and to imagine something better. Educators, don’t look away; what’s coming for your classroom is bigger than you think.
