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The Department of Education (ED) on Thursday clapped back at the Associated Press’ (AP) story accusing the administration of neglecting Black students, saying its headline was “inaccurate and dangerous.”
“It’s typical of @AP to cast ED’s important civil rights investigations as black vs. white issues when we see students of ALL races struggle academically,” the ED posted on X.
The AP wrote that the federal government has historically attempted to remedy “systemic discrimination against Black people and other people of color.” The report took issue with the current ED stripping “funding from some districts that used it to create magnet schools intended to be more diverse.”
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The reporter noted that the Department of Justice “pressed schools to desegregate” and that the “Department of Education worked to promote equal opportunity and held schools accountable for racial bias.”
However, according to AP, the administration is reversing that work in education as “civil rights lawyers describe the Republican administration’s actions as a complete inversion of legal history.”
“But under the Trump administration, efforts to address deep-rooted inequities for students of color are being cast as discriminatory against white students. Programs that have long withstood legal scrutiny are now quick to be deemed ‘illegal DEI’ — diversity, equity and inclusion — by the White House. Schools that do not comply have faced threats to their funding, and in some cases, lost federal grants,” the AP wrote.
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The AP report went on to cite the investigations opened by the Trump administration into the Chicago Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District’s programs geared toward Black students.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) was probed by the administration for its Black Student Success Program, resulting in $20 million in federal funding being withheld over the program. ED Secretary Linda McMahon posted on X in September last year that the department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a letter to CPS saying that the district violated anti-discrimination laws through its “exclusionary Black Student Success Plan,” which they noted solely serves Black students.
Los Angeles was probed for creating a similar program called the Black Student Achievement Plan.
“In 2023, Defending Education, a Virginia-based conservative group, filed a complaint to the Education Department, alleging discrimination against non-Black students. The district said it would no longer consider Black enrollment and instead focus solely on metrics such as high absenteeism and low test scores, emphasizing that all students could take part,” the AP wrote.
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The ED responded on X that the headline was “inaccurate and dangerous,” arguing that such programs are an infringement upon basic fairness all students are entitled to.
“To allocate resources disproportionately to students of one race at the expense of others is not only a violation of civil rights law, but an infringement upon the basic fairness to which all students are entitled,” the department added.
The AP did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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