Trump Vowed to Push Schools to the Right on Gender and Race. Now He Can.

The Washington Post / Laura Meckler, Hannah Natanson

12:11 JST, November 18, 2024

All year long, Donald Trump pushed an education culture war from the campaign trail. Now, as president-elect, he’s set to press it from the seat of power in Washington, sending fresh energy into a movement that mushroomed over the four years since he last occupied the Oval Office.

As a candidate, Trump repeatedly promised to drive “critical race theory and transgender insanity” out of schools and block federal funds from schools that refuse. He vowed to prevent transgender girls playing on girls’ and women’s athletic teams, or, as he put it, “keep men out of women’s sports.” And he promised to give parents new rights to monitor their children’s education.

Details were often sketchy and some of Trump’s promises contradict each other. Others may be difficult if not impossible to fulfill – in part because states and local school boards, not the federal government, operate public schools. But there are road maps available to execute much of his agenda – in some cases via Congress and in others, through executive action.

And while his promise to shut down the Department of Education has drawn enormous attention, experts in both parties say this is not likely to have sufficient support. A more likely outcome is Trump using the department to press a conservative world view.

“President Trump has a mandate from the American people to go back to common sense governance,” said Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents’ rights group, whose name is one of several being circulated as a possible education secretary. Among the targets, she said: “He is going to end gender ideology across America.”

Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy and politics at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, is also expecting action, arguing that Trump’s instinct to reduce federal control over schools will lose out to his instinct to shape schools in accordance with his views.

“They’re going to use everything in their power to bring every K-12 school into compliance with their vision,” she predicted.

In Congress, a vote is expected on GOP legislation dubbed a “parents’ bill of rights.” A version approved by the House last year requires that schools inform parents they have the right to review curriculums, school spending and library books.

It also says elementary and middle school teachers must obtain parents’ agreement before changing a student’s name or pronouns or permitting a student to use a locker room or bathroom that does not match their biological sex – a directive that would be at odds with the law in California and the policy in hundreds of school districts. Trump might also push legislation barring transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams.

And many Republicans are keen to create a federal tax credit for donations to school voucher programs – another Trump promise.

But even without congressional action, the new administration could advance its agenda using executive power.

Specifically, Trump has promised to use the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to threaten school districts with the loss of federal funding if they do not comply with a conservative interpretation of laws banning discrimination on the basis of race and sex in federally funded schools.

The government can open investigations into schools for possible violations. In these cases, schools typically reach agreements that can include policy changes and monitoring.

The Obama and Biden administrations both used this authority to press their priorities on issues of race and gender. They pushed schools to reduce racial disparities in rates of discipline. They also told schools that discrimination against transgender students amounted to unlawful sex discrimination. That meant, for instance, giving trans students access to bathrooms and locker rooms matching their gender identity.

The Biden administration codified its view on gender identity into a sweeping regulation on how the administration interpreted Title IX, the law banning sex discrimination. Those rules bar school districts from discrimination based on gender identity and prompt investigations if schools do not respect trans students’ identity.

Now Trump is poised to use his powers in the opposite direction. Trump is widely expected to unravel the Biden Title IX rules, which are already on hold in half the country due to court injunctions. And Trump has signaled that his administration would go further, issuing its own guidance or regulations that force schools to comply with a conservative vision. That could lead to investigations against schools that treat transgender students in accordance with their identity. For instance, the incoming Trump administration could argue that forcing girls to share bathrooms or compete with athletes who were born biologically male violates their rights.

The department also could assert that various diversity and equity programs amount to racial discrimination – such as affinity groups or other programs that focus on the race of students or staff, or lessons that suggest White people hold privilege in America.

“It’s something they can do quickly,” said Sasha Pudelski, a lobbyist for AASA, the School Superintendents Association. “The administration can move to ensure that school districts that are not complying with their definition of civil rights for students can be investigated.”

And the public should expect decisive action, a Trump spokeswoman said.

“The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” said Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt. “He will deliver.”

A different Donald Trump?

Trump paid scant attention to education during most of his first term. But as his term was coming to an end, the coronavirus pandemic helped set off an explosive debate over what and how schools teach about race, sex and gender – which began with concerns over pandemic safety policies but morphed into complaints about left-leaning, inappropriate instruction over race and gender.

“Our kids have been locked down. They’ve been masked. We have seen they are being indoctrinated,” said Justice of Moms for Liberty, one of the national groups founded to push back on these policies.

Politicians and conservative pundits took notice: Between 2021 and 2024, GOP-run states passed more than 70 laws restricting education on race, sex and gender – a landslide of curriculum legislation that experts say is without precedent in U.S. history. So by the time Trump launched his 2024 presidential campaign, a conservative culture war agenda had been well established.

Some of what comes next will depend on who he picks as education secretary, how much attention he gives the matter internally and how hard he presses Congress to act on these ideas.

“I think that the jury is very much out on whether this is even a national issue at all,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, an expert in education history and policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “The idea of somebody in the Department of Education telling your school district what it can or can’t do around sports or even curriculum around gender? I think that it could also create some really huge blowback.”

During the first Trump administration, the Education Department under Secretary Betsy DeVos took a traditional conservative view favoring a light federal footprint, leaving decisions to local and state officials. For instance, in rolling back Obama-era guidelines regarding gender identity, the Trump administration said it had been issued “without due regard for the primary role of the states and local school districts in establishing educational policy.”

But now the opposite strain inside the party is arguing for using federal power rather than jettisoning it.

“Betsy was on record saying these are issues that are local and should be handled locally,” said Jim Blew, a top DeVos aide during her tenure. No more. “There is definitely that thread in the party right now.”

Already many teachers, parents and school leaders are worried.

Trump’s win means schools everywhere need to “brace for impact,” said Karen Svoboda, founder and executive director of national parents’ group Defense of Democracy, a nonprofit group formed to boost progressive policies in schools and combat the agendas of opposing groups like Moms for Liberty.

Battles over race and gender will reignite with a fury, she predicted. But this time, she noted, progressives will be battling without support from Washington, and not just in conservative states.

“The firing of teachers, the harassing of teachers, the banning of books, the things you’ve been reading about happening in Texas, Oklahoma and Florida – they’re coming now to New York, to Massachusetts and California,” Svoboda said.

Her group, with 5,000 members and 58 chapters across 11 states, is now focused on the local level – advocating for teachers and librarians and progressive policies – “because that’s the only place where we still have any amount of control.”

In South Carolina just before Halloween, teacher Mary Wood – who was reported by her own students for a lesson on race in 2023 – finished a run feeling good. She was starting to believe things had calmed down, in her conservative town and across America.

Then her phone buzzed. Someone had texted a picture of a campaign pamphlet advertising conservative candidates for school board – and bearing a picture of Wood’s face.

“It’s time to put parents back in the driver’s seat!” the pamphlet read. It was paid for by the “Defeating Communism PAC,” she learned, and had been mailed to homes across the county. Worried for her safety, Wood’s school district asked her to stay home for two days. She kept her two children home, too.

When she found out Trump won a few days later, her fears intensified. Trump’s return to the White House would rip the “guardrails” from red states like hers, she felt.

“I feel physically unsafe, I feel professionally unsafe,” Wood said. “I have no idea what to expect.”

The next day, she stayed home again.