The U.S. Department of Education has issued a “Dear Colleague” letter warning colleges and K-12 schools they risk jeopardizing their access to federal funding if they promote what the agency labels “pervasive and repugnant” racial preferences out of step with the Trump administration’s vision.
The language of the Feb. 14 letter is alternately sweeping and vaguely worded, and the implications for schools — and the companies serving them — are nebulous.
Authored by Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, the letter targets admissions policies in colleges but also references schools, which it defines as including preschool, elementary, and secondary schools.
In a footnote, the administration says the document is meant to provide legal guidance and “does not have the force and effect of law.”
The legality of the policies outlined in the letter — as with many of the directives put forward by the new Trump administration over the past few weeks — are unclear.
Several lawsuits are in play challenging the administration’s authority to impose spending cuts across federal agencies and access agency data. Filed by employees, state attorneys general, and advocacy groups, some of those lawsuit contend that Trump does not have the authority to halt funding that has been awarded by Congress.
Trainor argues that educational institutions have discriminated against “white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families.”
The language of the Dear Colleague letter at one point references admissions models set by K-12 schools, and it cites the language of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions.
That decision was widely seen as also having implications for pre-college efforts, in areas such as recruitment and selection for academic programs, and teacher training, that seek to achieve racial diversity.
14-Day Deadline
But the letter also wades into other areas of higher education and school policy. It claims, for instance, it is unlawful for education institutions to eliminate standardized testing in order to “achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity.”
And it says that diversity, equity, and inclusion-focused programs — which Trump has sought to dismantle through executive orders — “preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.”
The Department of Education says it will assess compliance with its interpretation of the law within 14 days of the date of the letter, including “antidiscrimination requirements that are a condition of receiving federal funding.”
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The letter is one of many directives and statements issued by the Trump administration in recent weeks have sought to upend the federal role in education policy.
Three weeks ago, the administration directed federal agencies to “pause” spending on grants, in a memo that caused chaos across government. A day later, the administration clarified that the stoppage would not apply to multibillion dollar federal K-12 programs like Title I and IDEA. A day after that, the administration said it was rescinding the memo entirely, some some federal grant recipients say their funding was halted, anyway.
In a subsequent, Jan. 29 executive order, Trump demanded that the secretary of education and leaders of a group of federal agency heads give him recommendations for eliminating funding for K-12 schools that engage in what he called “indoctrination” over race and gender topics.
And last week, the administration moved to cancel dozens of contracts focused on research and evaluation at the U.S. Department of Education. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency said it would seek to nix 89 contracts worth more than $880 million, many of them evidently focused on the Institute of Education Sciences, the department’s main research arm.
Takeaways: Long on legal admonitions but short on specifics, the letter seems to be the latest effort by the administration to use the threat of withholding federal money to get schools and colleges in step with Trump’s agenda.
His administration has previously accused schools of engaging in “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
Surveys suggest, however, that the kinds of race-focused lessons targeted by the Trump administration in schools are exceedingly rare. For instance, a nationally representative survey by the EdWeek Research Center of teachers in 2021 found that more than 90 percent said they had never taught or discussed critical race theory, which at the time had become a focus of many Republicans’ messaging.
The challenge for education companies isn’t so much gauging whether Trump administration’s policies and statements, like those espoused in the new letter, will hold up legally. It’s figuring out how school districts will respond to them.
If school leaders are moved to recalibrate race- and gender-focused content and programs, based on the Trump administration’s actions, vendors will most likely be forced to alter what they offer to meet those needs . If school systems seem unmoved by the directives coming out of Washington, vendors aren’t likely to rush to change what they do anytime soon.