Legislative Brief February 2025 - New Updates from DOE

U.S. Department of Education Cuts Over $600 Million in Divisive Teacher Training Grants

On February 17, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education announced cuts to several grants to institutions and nonprofits that were using taxpayer funds to "train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies." See the full press release here.

Many of these grants were awarded to teacher preparation programs that train future classroom teachers. Examples given for eliminating the funding included:

• Requiring practitioners to take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities (e.g., racism) and critically reassess their own practices;
• Receiving professional development workshops and equity training on topics such as “Building Cultural Competence,” “Dismantling Racial Bias,” and “Centering Equity in the Classroom”;
• Acknowledging and responding to systemic forms of oppression and inequity, including racism, ableism, “gender-based” discrimination, homophobia, and ageism;
• Building historical and sociopolitical understandings of race and racism to interrupt racial marginalization and oppression of students in planning instruction relationship-building discipline and assessment;
• Providing “targeted practices in culturally relevant and responsive teaching abolitionist pedagogies and issues of diversity in classroom management”; and
• Providing spaces for critical reflection to help educators confront biases and have transformative conversations about equity. 

AASPA is continuing to monitor this information and is working with various association committees to provide our members with resources and support.

Office for Civil Rights (OCR) / Department of Education (DOE) "Dear Colleagues" letter

On February 14, 2025, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) within the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) issued a “Dear Colleague” letter directed at all preschool, elementary, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions, as well as state educational agencies that receive federal financial assistance, threatening the federal funding of any academic institution that considers race in any manner of operation.

This letter expanded the DOE’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down race-conscious admissions practices, to broadly prohibit all educational institutions that receive federal financial assistance from “using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

“If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.” Additionally, it emphasizes that “race-based decision-making, no matter the form, remains impermissible.”

The letter signals a broader effort by the new administration to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in education.

Institutions that fail to comply may, consistent with applicable law, face investigation and loss of federal funding. The Department will begin assessing compliance beginning no later than 14 days from issuance of the letter (February 28). The letter closed by advising institutions to do the following:

1. Ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law;
2. Cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends; and
3. Cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race.

AASPA is continuing to monitor this information and is working with various association committees to provide our members with resources and support.

The AASPA Legislative Committee

AASPA gives school personnel administrators the information and resources they need to become influential advocates for their schools, staff and students. To join the discussion go to: https://www.aaspa.org/get-involved To view AASPA's current national legislative priorities go to: https://www.aaspa.org/aaspa-legislative-priorities