President Trump signed several executive orders on Wednesday with the aim of reforming American schools, including limiting how racism is taught in classrooms, limiting anti -Semitism and allowing taxpayers to fund.
The orders are designed to promote the goal of Trump’s administration to mix the nation’s education system, which Mr Trump has long been violated by the promotion of leftist ideologies.
One of the commands, entitled “End of Radical Catechism at K-12”, has attempted to withhold funding from any schools teaching that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discreet”. It has made organizations to produce a “delay strategy” that will focus on paying out teachings on transgender issues, “white privilege” or “unconscious prejudice” in schools and “prioritize federal resources, according to The applicable law, for the promotion of patriotic education. ”
Another laid the foundations for the displacement of international students accused of “anti -Semitic harassment and violence” in relation to protests about the war in Gaza, part of a wider repression of what anti -Semitic speech considers.
And a third directed organization to search for grants and discretion programs that could be redefined for states to fund coupon programs. These programs distribute public funds to families to pay for children’s education at home or in private and religious schools.
The orders on Wednesday launched the training department to impose sanctions on schools that are removed from the issues of “patriotic education” that Mr Trump said that the support of American history lessons should be. And they appeared designed to send schools that are mixed to check on course lists for any content that could invite the government to cancel federal funds.
The mandate associated with anti -Semitism was widespread and recruited many federal organizations in an effort to identify and punish protesters who caused disorders in the midst of national protests against Israel and the war in Gaza – a group that could include in campus protests.
It directs the Foreign Department, the Department of Education and the Department of Internal Security to guide colleges to “report activities by foreign students and staff” that could be considered anti -Semitic so that they can be explored or deported.
Conservative legislators called on universities to break demonstrations against Israel. A report published by Republicans of the House in December brought the idea of expulsion of international students, who said they had expressed their support in Hamas, whose attack on the Israeli in October 2023 sparked more than a year.
The order stated the existing law that the government has been authorized to displace a person with a visa who “supports or adopts terrorist activity or persuades others to approve or adopt terrorist activity or to support a terrorist organization”, which the Report said that it should include the expression of sympathy for Hamas.
According to Biden’s administration, the Department of Education has explored dozens of colleges and public school areas regarding the complaints of anti-Semitism or anti-army and anti-Muslim discrimination. The section steadily with the complainants, directing colleges to take a more steady attitude against anti -Semitism and other forms of harassment or intimidation on the campus.
Legal scholars and political rights groups have regularly warned that federal research in schools on anti -Semitism can have a cold effect on protected speech. But a growing number of universities, including NYU and Harvard, has changed their policies to try to respond to reviews and limit protests. Among other politicians, some have adopted a definition of anti -Semitism that he considers certain criticism of Israel – such as the calling of his formation as a “racist effort” – to be anti -Semitic.
“It is simply crystalline that they are targeting people based on their views and speech supporting Palestinian rights,” said Radhika Sainath, a senior personnel lawyer with the Palestinian Legal team. “And they try to pull all federal sections into it.”
The second grade on Wednesday invited the Department of Education to end what it said it was attempts at American schools to force children to “adopt identities either as victims or as oppressors based solely on their skin color and other unchanged characteristics”. He also condemned the teaching of the class that he said that he had led the children to “dispute if they were born in the wrong body and whether they would see their parents and their reality as enemies to be accused”.
The mandate further warned that K-12 schools that defy the mandate could face investigation by the Department of Education and eventually loss of federal funding.
The mandate also revived an attempt to rewrite the history lessons that Mr Trump followed during his first term. The effort, known as a Committee of 1776, is a roadmap created by a group of right -wing Trump allies intended to question the teaching of slavery and depict social and political movements as subversive. The order restored the Commission and called on the Department of Education to fund it to the extent that it was legal.
Most of the federal funding in the public school districts comes through Title I, which provides grants that help maintain high fall and farm schools in areas with weaker tax bases. This funding is determined by Congress and its use to impose the president’s orders could present an uphill and possibly inappropriate battle.
However, the Department also provides a number of discreet grants aimed at helping students and low -income minority groups as well as students with disabilities. Many of these programs are currently being considered by the Agency to determine whether they are defying Mr Trump’s executive mandate to get rid of the government of “diversity, justice and integration” and other efforts.
Mr Trump’s orders have shown how he plans to exploit the Office of the Civil Rights of the Education Service, which has widespread power to enforce the laws on nation’s political rights, as it seeks to strengthen its conservative basis. The office is accused of enforcing some of the laws on the rights of the nation’s civil rights and can withhold federal money from schools that do not comply with the interpretation of their administration.
In the first week of Mr Trump’s new term, the Department of Education was one of the most vocals among federal organizations in support of his plans to eliminate programs considered as “radical” and “waste”.
The department sent a series of versions they had taken to comply with a previous mandate to cleanse efforts to increase diversity, racial equality in intake and accessibility to the entire government. Among other movements, he said, “they end the race -based discrimination and the use of harmful stereotypes”, needed measures to launch staff and identified 200 websites to go down.
And in an excellent step, the Department of Education announced that the Civil Rights Office had rejected pending complaints that people had testified in the office on efforts to ban race and sex books. The office-under the previous administration of Mr Trump reinforced his mission to be an apolitical “neutral event alarm”-reducing last week that it had ended what it was called “Biden Book Ban Hoax”.
Movements have been applauded by the right groups. Nicole Neily, founder and president of parents who defend education, called on the executive class a “justification” of parents who are concerned about the way racism is taught in schools and a “huge first step in extracting this poison from the American Educational System ».
The team had filed several complaints in the office under the previous administration, arguing that school diversity programs violated federal rights laws.
A series of organizations hit the president’s mandate on class teaching on Wednesday, saying that it promotes the deformed views of history and condemns practices that do not reflect the reality faced by public students.
James Grossman, executive of the American Historical Union, said the executive mandate misleading how American history and citizens were teaching. The recent survey of the team’s teachers “found few evidence that teachers are doing any of the things that are banned in this executive series,” he said.
In a statement on Wednesday, Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal defense agency, described the promotion of patriotic education as “lime of the chapters of documented history of our nation associated with race, gender, sexism, homophobia and related injustices ”.
Mr Trump’s third grade on Wednesday ordered the services, in revising the distinctive costs, to find ways to distribute more federal funds to “expand freedom of education” through coupon programs.
The mandate mentioned a national evaluation of the educational progress report, which was also released on Wednesday, as proof that public schools fail to students and that the government should fund alternatives. The report found that students’ adequacy in reading had collapsed.
“Too many children do not thrive at the K-12 school assigned,” the mandate said.
The expansion of school selection programs has been a key conservative educational policy for years and has been the main priority of Mr Trump’s first secretary, Betsy Devos.
Many states already have policies that allow families to deal with their children or register them with private or religious institutions that use public funds. Supporters say programs allow parents to find the educational choices that are best for their children and to leave public schools that did not serve them well.
Critics accuse programs for filling the public school system and diverting poor funding to schools that are rarely required to meet state performance standards and often produce poor students.
“Instead of stealing money from taxpayers to finance private schools, we should focus on public schools,” said Rebecca Pringle, president of the National Education Union, a Teachers’ Union.
Anemona Hartocollis and Dana Goldstein He contributed a report from New York.
