Days before Donald Trump took office, the Biden Department of Education opened an application for $75 million worth of grant funding aimed at recruiting and retaining more nonwhite teachers, according to federal records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
The program, dubbed Supporting Effective Educator Development, makes tens of millions of dollars available to eligible nonprofit groups to increase “educator diversity” and to support an existing “diverse educator workforce.” Among other things, the program’s description claims that some minority students won’t reach their full potential unless they’re taught by educators who share their racial or ethnic background.
While the Department of Education’s grant application remains active, Trump has taken a hard line against diversity, equity, and inclusion practices during his first days in office. The president, for instance, issued an executive order on Monday ordering federal agencies to place all employees in DEI roles on administrative leave and to make arrangements to fire them by the end of the month. Additionally, Trump ordered his administration to identify private entities that may be racially discriminating through DEI policies for possible future litigation.
The White House did not respond when asked if the Department of Education’s racially exclusionary grant program would continue under the Trump administration.
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“Preference priority 1” of the program is “increasing educator diversity,” according to federal documents. This priority includes, among other things, paying eligible nonprofit groups to “develop projects” to improve the “recruitment, outreach, preparation, support, development, and retention” of racial minority teachers. The department is also seeking out grant proposals “to increase the proportion” of “diverse educators” by “building or expanding high-poverty school districts’ capacity to hire, support, and retain” them.
In addition to using taxpayer dollars to get more racial minorities jobs as teachers, the grant solicitation also seeks to disburse funds to increase racial equity at public schools. Among the department’s suggested programs was implementing “educator preparation programs and professional development programs” that are “inclusive with regard to race, ethnicity, culture, language, and disability status so that educators are better prepared to create inclusive, supportive, equitable, unbiased, and identity-safe learning environments.”
The $75 million grant program is just a drop in the bucket compared to the Department of Education’s broader DEI efforts. Under former President Joe Biden, the department disbursed over $1 billion in grant funding aimed at integrating DEI into the training and hiring practices of public schools, according to a report from the parental rights advocacy group Parents Defending Education.
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Parents Defending Education flagged several examples of what DEI in the public K-12 system looks like through documents obtained via public information requests. San Rafael City Schools in California, for instance, advocated racial quotas in 2024 by setting a goal to increase “the numbers of teachers, administrators and classified staff of color by 10% for all groups.” Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky, meanwhile, stated that part of its mission is to “attract, recruit, hire, and retain staff and leadership” that reflects the “diversity of the student body.” The district defined “diverse” as “pertaining to any and all cultures that are NOT heterosexual, male-centered, white, Western, and/or Christian.”
The Department of Education did not return a request for comment.
