President Donald Trump issued an expansive executive order last week to end illegal preferences and discrimination endemic in diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. During its implementation, let’s hope the U.S. secretary of education applies this directive to K-12 public education, which is deeply plagued with DEI cancer to the detriment of our nation’s children.
Conservative efforts to promote fairness and counter DEI initiatives in education so far have been focused mainly on higher education. In 2023, for example, the Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College determined that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions program violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Shortly thereafter, in February 2024, the Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case involving DEI policies in K-12 admissions, Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board. In December 2024, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to another K-12 public education case involving a magnet school using an equity-over-merit admissions system, Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence Corp. v. The School Committee for the City of Boston.
Effectively, while higher education institutions recently have been forced to move toward a merit-based admissions system, magnet schools, such as Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, or TJ, in Fairfax County, Virginia, are still using an admissions system that lacks an entrance exam and devalues the importance of a student’s grade point average. These equity-based metrics have caused the school to plummet in the national ranking from first place to 14th place within the four years they have been implemented. This year, TJ also experienced a 38% decrease in its number of national merit semifinalists after its final merit-based class graduated in June 2024.
Aside from lowering admissions standards to magnet schools, DEI is pervasive in K-12 public education in many other ways. Some districts have eliminated advanced academic programs because the demographic makeup of children in those classes was not desirable to decision-makers. Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts, for example, eliminated advanced math in middle school because district leaders felt there were not enough low-income students who qualified for the higher-level classes.
Many liberal public school districts have further implemented an “equity grading” system. This system, based on the book Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman, is intended to promote equal outcomes among students and eliminate a class ranking system. Following the pandemic, Fairfax County Public Schools, the ninth-largest public school district in the country with almost 183,000 students, was among the many districts that implemented an equity grading system in which students would receive a minimum of 50% on their assignments and tests, even if incomplete or not submitted at all. Equity grading devalues merit and disincentivizes hard work among our children.
Finally, to avoid demographic disparities in punitive measures in public schools, many liberal districts have moved to a restorative justice system. To avoid the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline,” public school administrators are using counseling measures in place of actual punishment, such as suspensions and detentions. Removing consequences for poor behavior has led to dangerous environments in our children’s public schools.
Some school districts have even codified demographic differences regarding “marginalized groups” and “power imbalances” into their codes of conduct. In Fairfax County Public Schools, for example, “discriminatory harassment” is an offense explicitly codified in the code of conduct to differentiate from harassment more generally. In it, there is a social hierarchy that takes students’ group identity into account when categorizing their offense.
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Aside from the unfairness of these DEI policies in K-12 public education, they most significantly harm the children whom public school district leaders suggest they are intended to assist and protect. Under restorative justice systems, for example, children in public schools are subject to unthinkable violence without much consequence in the classroom. Gifted children from families without resources to provide supplementary advanced math classes are denied access to such opportunities entirely when they are eliminated from their public schools.
Trump is absolutely right to suggest that America needs to return to a merit-based system in the federal government and higher education. I also hope federal and state efforts to that end will include a deep look into how our local K-12 public education systems are using DEI measures and then end those policies and eliminate related administrative positions.
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for the Federalist and the Washington Examiner; a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia; an author; and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network.