Under Trump, the Education Dept. has flipped its civil rights mission
The administration is prioritizing allegations that transgender students and students of color are getting unfair advantages while a backlog of other cases grows.
Workers leave the Department of Education building during a rain storm in Washington on May 21. (Wesley Lapointe/For The Washington Post)
The office has a backlog of about 25,000 unresolved cases, up from about 20,000 when President Donald Trump took office, department officials said.
At the same time, under Trump, the civil rights office has announced investigations of at least 99 schools, often based on news coverage or complaints from conservative groups. As of early August, the administration had launched 27 directed investigations, probes that are opened without an outside complaint, court filings show.
These changes define the new tone and mission in the civil rights office, which is aggressively pursuing Trump’s agenda. In choosing its targets, the administration is not just picking different priorities than its predecessors; it’s flipping the interpretation of civil rights law in the opposite direction.
The Post interviewed 10 current and former employees of the office about the changes and the backlogs. Several spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
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Under the Biden administration, the Office for Civil Rights focused on ensuring equal opportunity for students of color. Now, the office has opened several investigations into whether programs aimed at addressing inequities amount to illegal discrimination in favor of those students. Forty-five colleges, for instance, are being investigated for working with the PhD Project, a program that has tried to boost the number of Black, Hispanic and Native American students who earn doctorates in business.
In another example, last year the civil rights office required a New York school district to stop using its “Redskins” mascot, saying the moniker may have created a hostile environment for Native American students. This year, the same office found it is against the law to ban the mascots, calling it an attempt to erase the history of Native American tribes.
End of carouselUnder the Biden administration, the Office for Civil Rights focused on ensuring equal opportunity for students of color. Now, the office has opened several investigations into whether programs aimed at addressing inequities amount to illegal discrimination in favor of those students. Forty-five colleges, for instance, are being investigated for working with the PhD Project, a program that has tried to boost the number of Black, Hispanic and Native American students who earn doctorates in business.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump administration flips civil rights mission for schools – The Washington Post
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