The U.S. Department of Education has quietly rescinded a seminal 2015 “Dear Colleague” letter that outlined for schools and districts how they can comply with their legal obligations to serve English learners.
Advocates for English learners first became aware of the rescission the week of Aug. 11, calling it the latest effort by the federal government to weaken protections for the nation’s more than 5 million English learners.
This year alone, the Trump administration has:
- Revoked a policy memo declaring schools a “protected area” from immigration enforcement, leaving school districts serving immigrant students and English learners to address safety concerns for students and their families;
- Laid off almost all employees in the federal office dedicated to English learners;
- Withheld federal dollars intended for English learners, known as Title III Part A formula grants (and though the funds were eventually released to states, President Donald Trump still calls for cutting this funding for the 2026-27 school year);
- And issued an executive order declaring English the country’s official language, with the U.S. Department of Justice publishing initial guidance in July aimed at minimizing “non-essential multilingual services.”
In an emailed statement on Aug. 20, an Education Department spokesperson said the 2015 Dear Colleague letter—issued during the Obama administration—was rescinded “because it is not aligned with administration priorities.”
The Dear Colleague letter itself was not legally binding and merely outlined how schools and districts could meet their legal obligations to English learners under federal law, and discussed issues that frequently arise in civil rights investigations into schools over serving English learners.
The letter, which schools and districts relied on years, now has a notice in red at the top saying it remains available “for historical purposes only.”
Shifting priorities limit English learners’ rights
The Dear Colleague letter was one of the most widely used resources that the Department of Education ever issued for English learners because of how comprehensive and clear it was about schools’ legal expectations for serving these students, said Julie Sugarman, associate director for K-12 education research at the Migration Policy Institute.
The letter detailed what schools and districts must do to ensure they comply with the Civil Rights Act and other legal requirements regarding English learners, such as:
- Identifying and assessing English learners in need of language assistance in a timely, valid, and reliable manner;
- Providing English learners with a language assistance program that is educationally sound and proven successful;
- Sufficiently staffing and supporting the language assistance programs for English learners;
- Ensuring English learners have equal opportunities to meaningfully participate in all school-offered curricular and extracurricular activities, including the core curriculum, graduation requirements, specialized and advanced courses and programs, sports, clubs, and more.
It also covered common scenarios that the Department of Justice and the Education Department’s office for civil rights would investigate if they received complaints.
Leslie Villegas, a senior policy analyst at the think tank New America, said that while the actual laws enshrining English learners’ rights remain unaffected, rescinding the guidance signals the federal government’s priorities around the future of English-learner education and students’ rights.
“They want to make the right of English-learner students seem subjective … in the sense that they want to make it seem as if districts and schools and states are able to just decide on their own whether they need to follow these laws or not, when that is not the case,” Villegas said. “These are not optional. These are required.”
Fewer investigations likely after guidance rescinded
The decision also suggests the administration’s shifting priorities around which discrimination complaints it prioritizes in K-12 schools and could trigger an investigation, Sugarman said.
The Education Department’s office for civil rights also faced major reductions in staffing earlier this year, with those left at the agency focusing on politically-motivated investigations such as race-based programming and policies on transgender students’ ability to play on athletic teams and access bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
“I think it could very well embolden schools led by folks who don’t want to serve these kids to say, ‘well, now we don’t need to serve these kids,’” Sugarman said. “And clearly, that’s not true. But all of these messages sort of put together create an atmosphere where people can feel that there won’t be anybody looking over their shoulders to serve the kids.”
A February EdWeek Research Center survey found that 87% of educators who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election support schools’ federal requirement to provide English instruction to students who need such instruction to succeed academically, as outlined in the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols.
Sixty-three percent of educators who said they voted for Trump also said they support this requirement.
Sugarman acknowledged that the Education Department has never had the capacity to keep tabs on all schools serving English learners, relying instead on complaints filed by families and advocates to determine when to open investigations.
But with each new move at the federal level limiting resources and rights of English learners, Sugarman said it’s been clear that the Department of Education is not interested in following up on those complaints moving forward.
