Trump’s Latest Executive Order Promoting ‘Stricter School Discipline’ Discourages Schools From Considering Racial Disparities
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed executive orders purported to promote stricter school discipline — whatever that means.
No, seriously, there’s nothing in these orders that unambiguously states what constitutes stricter school discipline. The only thing clear about the agenda behind the orders is also the most predictable thing:
It’s more of Trump’s anti-DEI propganda.
From CHALKBEAT:
The executive orders target civil rights guidance from the Obama administration that Trump revoked during his first administration and Biden never formally restored. Some school leaders, teachers, and conservative education advocates blamed the Obama-era guidance for deteriorating safety conditions in schools, alleging that administrators let bad behavior slide rather than risk additional scrutiny.
The most recent federal data, from the 2021-22 school year, shows students report fewer assaults and less harassment and bullying than they did a decade ago. Still, a rise in school shootings along with viral videos of vicious assaults have fueled fears about school safety. Two-thirds of schools reported at least one violent incident on campus in the 2021-22 school year.
Under former President Barack Obama, the Education Department warned schools that policies that led to students of certain racial groups being suspended or expelled at much higher rates could be discriminatory. In particular, Black students tend to be suspended at higher rates than other students.
This approach to civil rights enforcement is an example of disparate impact analysis, which considers whether ostensibly race-neutral policies affect certain racial or ethnic groups differently.
The executive orders ban the use of disparate impact analysis in civil rights enforcement and threaten schools with consequences if they use “racial discrimination and preferencing” in school discipline.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, schools were forced to consider equity and inclusion when imposing discipline,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Their policies placed racial equity quotas over student safety, encouraging schools to turn a blind eye to poor or violent behavior in the name of inclusion.”
So, just to recap: There is no evidence whatsoever that studying racially disproportionate disciplinary actions made schools less safe, and the data indicates that, at best, the opposite is true. But the Trump administration will do what it always does, which is repeat lies without presenting evidence and then use those lies to justify policy. In this case, Trump’s orders not only make DEI unlawful, but they also make it unlawful to observe and study any data that might indicate the need for DEI.
Look, the MAGA world will always call it “Trump Derangement Syndrome” whenever we suggest that the president is dabbling in fascism, but a government leader using government authority to forcibly stifle ideas said government leader opposes is very much a cornerstone of Hitler’s guide to beating society into Nazi-esque submission.
Also, because white conservatives have generally turned diversity, equity and inclusion into a catch-all umbrella term — just as they did critical race theory and the ubiquitous thing they call “woke” — the administration has blindly tossed the “DEI” label behind disparate impact analysis by requiring that federal officials author a report analyzing “DEI-based school discipline and its consequences” to ensure the federal government doesn’t fund “racially preferential policies” such as model school discipline policies. The report should include information about the status of “discriminatory-equity-ideology-based school discipline and behavior modification techniques in American public education.” (The use of the term “discriminatory equity” alone tells us that this administration is just throwing words together with no regard to what they actually mean.)
And then there’s the underlying message:
Black kids are bad and studying racial disparities means they won’t be punished for it.
This goes back to McMahon’s baseless assertion that “racial equity quotas” were prioritized over “student safety” — an idea that, like all Trump-era ideas, must be backed by a secret database labeled “Trust Me, Bro” — but it’s a narrative that can be traced back to Trump’s first administration.
More from CHALKBEAT:
Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos, rescinded the Obama-era guidance after much public debate and attempts to link less harsh school discipline to school shootings.
That guidance led students to be “disciplined differently depending on their race, and some students who should have been suspended or expelled for dangerous behavior remained in the classroom,” the Trump administration said in a fact sheet.
President Joe Biden promised to reinstate the Obama-era school discipline guidance on the campaign trail, but that never came to fruition. In 2022, his education secretary, Miguel Cardona, did call for reduced suspensions and expulsions for students with disabilities — and there is some overlap as Black children with disabilities are more likely to face harsher discipline at school — but his focus was less on race.
Still, the Trump administration said the Biden administration used Title VI, a civil rights law that prohibits racial discrimination in schools and other federally funded activities, “to promote a DEI approach to school discipline, which makes schools less safe.”
Again, a Trump “fact sheet” is not a thing that requires actual facts. During his first term, there was no reason for one to hold their breath waiting for DeVos to cite evidence that, under Obama, dangerous Black students were being kept in the classroom because school officials were afraid of being called racist, and there’s no reason to expect McMahon to substantiate the same inherently racist claim now.
At the end of the day, these people just don’t want racial disparities to be studied at all, because, if they are, it might expose Trump’s entire anti-DEI agenda as exactly what it is.
A reinforcement of white supremacy.
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