U.S. Department of Education Cuts Over $600 Million in Divisive Teacher Training Grants

U.S. Department of Education: Press Release: Department of Education Cuts $600 Million in Grants Used to Train Teachers and Education

Agencies on Divisive Ideologies February 17, 2025:

The U.S. Department of Education today announced it has terminated over $600 million in grants to institutions and nonprofits that were using taxpayer funds to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies. Training materials included inappropriate and unnecessary topics such as Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); social justice activism; “anti-racism”; and instruction on white privilege and white supremacy. Additionally, many of these grants included teacher and staff recruiting strategies implicitly and explicitly based on race.

The grants are awarded to teacher preparation programs that train future classroom teachers. Examples from the grant applications included:

Requiring practitioners to take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities (e.g., racism) and critically reassess their own practices; 

Receiving professional development workshops and equity training on topics such as “Building Cultural Competence,” “Dismantling Racial Bias” and “Centering Equity in the Classroom”;

Acknowledging and responding to systemic forms of oppression and inequity, including racism, ableism, “gender-based” discrimination, homophobia, and ageism; 

Building historical and sociopolitical understandings of race and racism to interrupt racial marginalization and oppression of students in planning instruction relationship-building discipline and assessment; 

Providing “targeted practices in culturally relevant and responsive teaching abolitionist pedagogies and issues of diversity in classroom management”; and 

Providing spaces for critical reflection to help educators confront biases and have transformative conversations about equity.