When Herriman High School in Utah published a poster online for Inclusion Week earlier this year, encouraging students to dress up differently each day of the week, a former state school board member attacked the event on social media and called it a “way of giving the finger to anyone who says they are not allowed to do DEI"—including President Donald Trump. She called on people to report the school to the U.S. Department of Education.
But the effort—calling on students to dress for pajama day, sports day, beach day, crazy sock day, and Herriman pride day—wasn’t the type of race-based programming the president and his Education Department have explicitly sought to stamp out of the nation’s schools, arguing that it’s a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and thus a form of discrimination. It was to support the high school’s unified basketball team, composed of students with disabilities, who were headed to the state tournament.
“Inclusion has been a word that’s been used in special education for a lot longer than what DEI in the current education vernacular has been,” said Todd Quarnberg, the principal of Herriman, located outside of Salt Lake City.
The very public blowback, however, is one example of how seemingly simple word choices can create hurdles for educators in a politically charged climate. It’s something Quarnberg has had to think about constantly, especially because his school serves a large number of immigrant students. If he talks about his inherently diverse student population and the supports they need to succeed academically, does he risk losing funding?
“The thing that’s frustrating to me is, when did diversity and inclusion—when did these become nasty words?” Quarnberg said.
The Education Department hasn’t specifically defined ‘illegal DEI,’ causing confusion for educators
The U.S. Department of Education has issued a series of directives in recent months aimed at eliminating what it calls “illegal DEI practices” from the nation’s schools. The president in the second week of his new administration signed an executive order focused on what he called “radical indoctrination” in schools.
But in its communications to educators, the Education Department hasn’t specifically defined what it considers “illegal DEI,” prompting confusion among educators about what exactly might run afoul of the orders and draw unwanted attention. The lack of clarity has also propelled court challenges that have seen early success.
Legal experts and education advocates have said the confusion is the point: That the vague language in the department’s guidance documents is meant to have a chilling effect on schools.
In addition to those guidance documents and suspended effort to have all states and school districts sign anti-DEI certifications, the Education Department is cracking down on DEI by pursuing discrimination probes against schools and colleges that come with a threat to pull funding.
The department’s focus on DEI has landed mostly at the higher education level, according to an EdWeek analysis of public announcements of the agency’s investigations. In recent weeks, however, the administration has begun looking toward K-12. (The Education Department did not respond to a message seeking comment for this story.)
Though it’s only launched three DEI cases probing school districts, the investigations are beginning to paint a broad picture of what the administration might consider “illegal DEI practices.”
The Education Department opened two cases in Illinois in late April and early May targeting programs the department says violate Title VI, which prohibits race-based discrimination in federally funded programs. In one case, the agency alleged the Evanston-Skokie school district has educators conduct “privilege walks” and has segregated affinity groups. (A district spokesperson told the Daily Northwestern the department’s complaint “misrepresents our District’s lawful and important professional learning and student-focused initiatives that are designed to advance the work of ensuring that all students have access and opportunity to a robust, high quality education.”)
The agency opened an investigation into Chicago Public Schools after the school board approved a “Black Student Success Plan,” arguing that by “focusing on remedial measures only for Black students,” it was discriminatory. The plan includes benchmarks such as hiring more Black male educators, accelerating Black students’ achievement growth, enhancing Black students’ sense of belonging, and reducing disciplinary actions against Black students. A spokesperson for the district has previously declined to comment on the investigation.
Months earlier, the department had opened another investigation into the Ithaca City school district in New York over its Students of Color Summit events, arguing the program excluded white students, according to the Ithaca Times. Sean Eversley Bradwell, president of the district’s school board, told the Times that the district welcomed the investigation, as the programs “do not exclude.”
“The 2024 event was created by students to support and affirm Students of Color, and all students, staff and educators were invited to attend,” Bradwell said in the statement.
Excluding one group of students from programs based on race is a violation of Title VI. In fact, the Biden administration issued guidance in 2023 saying schools could provide students of the same race or national origin opportunities to discuss those shared experiences together, but could not prohibit other students from participating.
“Most DEI efforts are not unlawful under Title VI, and many are implemented to address discrimination,” said Kimberly Robinson, director of the Education Rights Institute at the University of Virginia School of Law. “However, race-exclusive efforts run a high risk of violating Title VI.”
Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement announcing the Chicago investigation that the agency would not allow federal funds, “provided for the benefit of all students, to be used in this pernicious and unlawful manner.”
“... Every American student deserves access to a quality education, and the Trump Administration will fight tirelessly to uphold that ideal and ensure all students are treated equally under law,” he continued.
Others say there’s a different goal driving these actions.
“The strategy here is to tear apart civil rights protections for certain communities and certain civil rights gains made through acknowledging some of the barriers that those groups experience and creating programs to address those barriers,” said Bayliss Fiddiman, senior director of educational equity at the National Women’s Law Center.
Some districts are decreasing their DEI emphasis, according to survey results
The department’s use of Title VI is not unlike how it is wielding Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination, said Fiddiman. Trump has issued orders meant to roll back protections for transgender students, and the department has opened 27 cases over transgender student policies, mostly investigating school districts, according to an EdWeek’s tracker of Education Department investigations.
Law experts have said the administration’s interpretation of Title IX to prohibit transgender athletes from joining girls’ and women’s teams and accessing girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms has not been settled by the courts and that the law has never been found to require the exclusion of certain students.
“This administration has taken license to interpret Title VI in the way that they want to,” Fiddiman said.
As the cases begin to unfold, new data suggest the administration’s threats are having a real effect on districts’ DEI efforts.
Approximately 5% of teachers, school leaders, and district leaders said their district’s emphasis on programs that incorporate DEI had completely stopped since Trump took office, according to a nationally representative, EdWeek Research Center survey conducted from March 26 to April 22. Another 10% said the focus had “decreased.” But a majority of respondents, 84%, said their district’s emphasis had stayed the same.
The bigger the district, the more likely educators were to say there had been a decrease in emphasis on DEI, according to the survey, which included responses from 719 educators.
Twenty percent of educators in districts of 10,000 or more students said their district had decreased its emphasis on programs incorporating DEI since the start of the second Trump administration, compared with 9% from districts of 2,500 to 9,999 students and 4% from districts of fewer than 2,500 students.
Educators from urban school districts were also more likely than their counterparts from suburban and rural districts to report a decrease.
Though courts have paused many of the Education Department’s anti-DEI efforts, the opening of new probes “is a threat to other schools, of course, because now they’re worried that they might be next,” Fiddiman said.
