How close this country came to being extinguished.
Probes handled by the department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against public schools, colleges and universities roughly doubled during the Biden administration, topping 20,000 last year. Investigations by hundreds of OCR lawyers and staff members -- and responses to them by untold numbers of school officials and administrators -- touched on everything from allegations of sexual violence and disability accommodations to website compatibility.
Defenders of the office say it has been an invaluable protector of civil rights for America's nearly 70 million students. They say eliminating or even downsizing the office, which has already begun, would kneecap thousands of ongoing investigations while abolishing a prime instrument of justice.
"This reckless action strips students of vital resources and tears down statutorily mandated functions that are essential to addressing racial and economic inequality in education," the ACLU declared last month. Trump, it said, has put "millions of students' education and civil rights at risk."
Advocates for handicapped students, who until recent years accounted for half of all complaints, are concerned they might get short shrift in the Trump administration and have gone to court to block cuts. "We have many members who file complaints, and it has left many of them in limbo, or distraught, thinking there will be no accountability," said Selene A. Almazan, legal director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, plaintiffs in a suit filed March 14.
But backers of Trump's effort to eliminate the Department of Education counter that the Office for Civil Rights is a symbol of how the federal government has expanded its reach into what they describe as chiefly local matters. They say its investigative arm has been designed to make it as easy as possible for the department to maximize its influence and oversight through investigations.
A complainant does not need a personal connection to a school. Indeed, petitioners don't even have to live in the same state, and legal standing is not a factor. They do not even need to identify themselves. They are not required to try to resolve their problems at the local level before notifying the feds -- though many do. Consequently, the office's operations sometimes function as a nationwide anonymous sounding board rather than a source of last resort, a place where anyone can make a federal case out of any slight, real or perceived.
Although OCR probes include many serious allegations, the system's structure means the number of cases can be inflated through duplication, serial filers and ambitious bureaucrats.
"The numbers aren't really what they first appear," said Teresa R. Manning, policy director at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative counterweight in higher education to the liberal American Association of University Professors. "A lot of this was by design. If they didn't have complaints, they wouldn't have jobs, so a lot of federal bureaucrats and campus officers want any grievance to become a federal case."
Trump has largely shut the office down:
The numbers themselves are unclear. Neither the Department of Education nor its Office for Civil Rights responded to multiple requests for comment, and a listed phone number is no longer manned daily; voice messages left there were not returned. But it appears the administration has laid off some 240 people in the OCR, shuttering at least six of its 12 regional offices. Currently, eight of 22 "key staff" positions there are vacant, according to its website.
When Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon first announced layoffs in February, reports mentioned 12,000 active investigations listed on the OCR database, which was last updated on Jan. 14. Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his own report on the office, claiming 6,800 cases would be shortchanged by the layoffs.
But no matter which total is used, the claim that U.S. schools are teeming with incidents of overt racism or sexism, or bias against handicapped students, is misleading, according to experts familiar with the OCR and its work.
In theory, every complaint is reviewed to determine if it constitutes discrimination on the basis of race ("Title VI"), sex ("Title IX"), or disability. If so, the Office for Civil Rights can open an investigation, or its attorneys can allege that there are "systemic" violations and trigger much broader investigations.
Such initiatives were highlighted in a glossy report the office released on Jan. 16, four days before Trump's inauguration. The office appears to have published six such "special reports" since 2016, with half of those during Biden's term. Two of them -- the first and another in 2021 -- dealt with alleged "racial disparities" or "equity" in school discipline.
This looks like a more proactive OCR following the age-old practice of boosting the cases on its books and then insisting it needs more funding, said Jim Blew, a co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute and a former assistant secretary of education in Trump's first term.
"Skepticism is legitimate, because by declaring something is 'systemic,' then rather than resolve that one issue they can turn it into a federal case," Blew said. "And if you're going to interpret the discrimination on much different and broader levels than ever before, that's going to increase the number of complaints, too."