Trump executive order aims to eliminate DEI from school discipline policies

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday designed to weed out diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria in public school discipline policies.

The goal is to restore behavior-based standards to address growing concerns over student safety and classroom orders, according to the Trump administration, while reversing DEI-based approaches that prioritized racial quotas over safety and fairness.

“A student’s success in adulthood starts with how they perform in a classroom, and we should teach our kids to discern right and wrong from a young age,” said US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement. “Under the Biden-Harris Administration, schools were forced to consider equity and inclusion when imposing discipline. Their policies placed racial equity quotas over student safety, encouraging schools to turn a blind eye to poor or violent behavior in the name of inclusion.”

The executive order directs state and local educational agencies to shift away from what the Trump administration describes as practices that pressured schools to discipline students differently based on race. The order also requires federal guidance and a report analyzing the consequences of these DEI-based policies, with the goal of implementing discipline rooted in what the administration calls “commonsense American values.”

The move reverses policies from the Obama administration that urged schools to equalize discipline rates across racial groups, often under threat of losing federal funding. Trump rolled back these guidelines in 2018, but the Biden administration reinstated them in 2023.

This policy change comes amidst heightened concern over increasing incidents of violence and crime in schools across the nation, including in North Carolina. While the 2023-24 school year saw a 7.7% drop in crime rates compared to the previous year, the NC Department of Public Instruction reports that acts of crime and violence remain 9.3% higher than in 2021-22.

NC public schools have been grappling with long-term behavioral and disciplinary challenges worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. A DPI report indicated that suspensions rose across multiple categories during the 2022-23 school year, with short-term suspensions increasing by over 13% since pre-pandemic levels. Similarly, schools reported significant increases in student possession of controlled substances, such as marijuana and other drugs, further complicating safety efforts.

Legislation aimed at discipline reform in North Carolina has faced roadblocks. Earlier efforts by Republican lawmakers, such as House Bill 187 from 2023, which sought to redefine how schools categorize offenses and implement stronger standards for student conduct, passed the state House but failed to advance in the Senate.

The version of the budget for the new biennium approved by the Senate recently also addresses school safety. The budget includes $35 million in both years of the biennium for school-safety grants, usable for “services for students in crisis, school safety training, safety equipment in schools, and subsidizing the School Resource Officer Grants program,” according to a press release from the office of Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham.

The post Trump executive order aims to eliminate DEI from school discipline policies first appeared on Carolina Journal.