WASHINGTON – The rights of Americans to self-determine how to educate their children — a hotly contested matter that stretches back to at least the Civil War — have long been intertwined with the principle of equally and equitably educating children across racial lines.
When President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Education Department, he declared that“the experiment of controlling American education through federal programs and dollars … has plainly failed our children, our teachers, and our families.” By doing so, he reopened a debate in the fight over the federal government’s role in education policy.
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Civil rights advocates see Trump’s order to shutter the department as a broadside against hard-fought gains in educational access — an unfinished, but nonetheless central, part of the movement for racial equality and greater democracy. Supporters of the president's plans, however, see it as a step toward providing more local control and higher quality educational opportunities for different communities.
Now, a coalition of civil rights and education groups, including the NAACP and the National Education Association, have filed a lawsuit against Trump's order shuttering the Education Department, arguing that the administration's cuts to the agency's staff will hobble mandated functions like protecting students from discrimination or funding educational programs.
The coalition argues the order is unconstitutional because it must be done by Congress, who created the department in 1979. They further argue that communities of color, disabled people, low-income students and some educators would have no recourse against civil rights violations in schools if the department was closed.
The Trump administration has made antisemitism cases the priority for the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, which investigates discrimination complaints in schools. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has suggested the civil rights office could move over to the Justice Department.
Civil rights leaders draw historical parallels
Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement that the White House's argument that abolishing the department would empower states and localities to better respond to their respective communities is a “fabricated justification” that “harkens back to a period of legalized school segregation."
Members of Congress and liberal legal groups have also promised action in response to the order.
Rep. Jahana Hayes, a former school teacher, introduced a bill in Congress that would invest in the department and reverse Trump's order, which the Connecticut Democrat called “incoherent” given the administration's priorities on government efficiency. The legislation is unlikely to advance in the Republican-led House, but it highlights Democrats' messaging on the issue.
Michael Pillera, a former Education Department senior civil rights attorney, argued that Trump’s order “will destroy civil rights guardrails that ensure educational opportunity for all students — and shatter educational opportunity for Black students and other students of color in particular.”
Advocates of school choice, however, view the executive order as a key step in enabling communities to more nimbly respond to the needs of different students. School choice is a broad term that describes policies that help families pursue alternatives to neighborhood public schools, including charter schools, homeschooling, and taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools.
Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy organization, said in a statement that Trump's order “will have both brought down a failed bureaucratic machine in DC, and brought school choice to every state.”
Advocates of school choice often point to low-performing public schools, measured by test scores and other student outcomes, as a reason that school systems should be subject to greater market forces. But many civil rights groups and educators say such policies only benefit wealthy or privileged students and would worsen many of the problems school choice advocates say they aim to address.
“We all know that we need to do more to improve our schools, especially for those routinely denied an excellent education,” Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement. But Trump's order, Wiley argued, “is a direct attack on schools and the right to an education.”
The department, Wiley said, should be improved for the sake of Black families who may feel the worst effects of its closure: “Fix it, don’t nix it, because it is the place parents can go to hold their schools accountable for delivering services and ensuring schools are meeting their obligations to use federal dollars as intended.”
The Education Department's connection to civil rights legacy
The first U.S. Department of Education was founded in 1867 as a hub to survey and improve American education, which happened amid the country's Reconstruction era, the 12-year period after the Civil War when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were adopted to push to unify and advance the country.
The agency only lasted a year before it was rolled into the Interior Department amid pushback from anti-Reconstruction Southern politicians and white supremacist vigilantes who associated any federal oversight with empowering freedmen, the country’s formerly enslaved people of African descent. A standalone department with a mandate to improve education wasn’t reestablished until over a century later by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
Education has long been foundational to the debate over civil rights and democracy. Formerly enslaved people, who were banned by law from receiving an education, immediately organized for schools to become literate and trained in vocations in a bid for self-determination. Historically Black colleges and universities were central to improving Black economic power and served as incubators for the Civil Rights movement.
The fight against school segregation was an integral chapter during America's Jim Crow era. School segregation was premised on the idea that educational systems could be "separate but equal," or that Black students could receive a similar quality education despite states and localities explicitly discriminating against them.
The Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education found that school segregation had a “detrimental effect” on Black students, implied the “inferiority” of Black communities, and was thus unconstitutional. The court also acknowledged that because education is handled by states and local governments, there would be “considerable complexity” in enacting its ruling.
The decision kicked off decades of debates over discrimination and educational access in communities across the nation. The Education Department has, since its creation 25 years after the landmark ruling, taken on a central role in mediating disputes and enforcing civil rights laws across the country.
What will happen when the Education Department closes?
The administration has pushed back on concerns that the closure of the department would end crucial funding, despite some calls from Republican lawmakers to overhaul or downsize many such programs. Republican lawmakers have long argued that the federal government has no role in education policy and conservative activists, emboldened by a crisis in education after the COVID-19 pandemic, have gained momentum by portraying public education and the Education Department as overbearing and ineffective.
McMahon has said she will remove red tape and empower states to decide what’s best for their schools. She has also promised to continue essential services like those for students with disabilities.
But some Black educators are now concerned that the department’s closure may weaken education in marginalized communities, which have traditionally turned to schools as a way to ensure upward mobility and political power.
“I think it’s very dangerous to totally rely on states’ rights," said Sharif El-Mekki, a former principal and founder of the Center for Black Educator Development, a non-profit that recruits Black teachers. “Because too often, states’ rights in the past have meant the state had the right to harm who they chose, to leave children behind, and often their right to choose less support on the backs of Black, brown, Indigenous and immigrant students.”
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