Fight for equity? Educators say YES!

In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to do everything in her power to shut down the agency.

By that time, the administration had cut the staff at ED by nearly 50 percent—that’s around 1,900 employees whose tasks included conducting research on student success; supporting teacher development; enforcing accountability in how districts spend federal funds; and investigating and helping to resolve civil rights issues in public schools.

Educators, parents, and administrators know how profoundly public school students will be hurt if Trump’s ultimate goal to shutter the agency becomes a reality. More than 50 million students across the country rely on programs funded through federal dollars.

“If you believe students in every ZIP code deserve access to a quality public education, then you believe in the work of the federal Department of Education,” says Susana O’Daniel, NEA’s manager of federal partnerships.

“One of the agency’s core functions is protecting students’ civil rights, and its programs—including Title I, Pell Grants, and the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA)—are important for Black and brown children, lower-income families, and students with disabilities,” O’Daniel says.

Is our country about to roll back progress on equity in public education? Not if educators have their say.

Raise your voice

Educators, parents, and allies across the country are mobilizing and speaking out against potential federal education cuts.

“We won’t be silent as anti-public education politicians try to steal opportunities from our students, our families, and our communities to finance tax cuts for billionaires,” says NEA President Becky Pringle.

There’s no better way to speak out than through your union, says Janice Dwosh, a retired educator who taught in a Title I school in Arizona.

“We can all stand up to these cuts by telling our story,” she says. “Your voice matters!” Dwosh’s top suggestions:

• Speak up at local school board meetings.
• Meet with state legislators.
• Contact members of Congress.
• Participate in town halls, school walk-ins, and other union-planned events.

Educators share how cuts to federal programs would hurt them and their students (below).

Jim Crow laws segregated White and Black students, preventing them from going to school together. Native American students were often sent to boarding schools to assimilate into White culture. Girls were often taught different curricula with fewer opportunities for higher education.

And most students with disabilities were shut out of schools.

“Students with disabilities weren’t educated in most cases,” says Jack Schneider, a professor and director of the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They were turned away, and their families were told that the school didn’t have the facilities [or] the resources to serve their kids.”

Some students with disabilities were in school, but with few accommodations or none at all. No one counted the number of young people with disabilities who were entirely left out of the education system.

Before the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) passed, many state laws said schools only had to educate students with disabilities if they were aware of them.

“They tried not to find the kids, because if they found them, they had to do something with them,” says Edwin Martin, the first assistant secretary of education for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which opened when ED was founded. “So, we wrote ‘Child Find’ into the law as a require­ment.”

A section of IDEA, Child Find, specifies that states must identify, locate, and evaluate all children with disabilities who are in need of special education services. Read more about schools before IDEA.                       

 —Kalie Walker