References to diversity, equity and inclusion at K-12 school board meetings have declined sharply alongside Trump administration efforts to purge race-based programs from public education.
The school tracking website Burbio reported Tuesday that mentions of DEI declined from 38.1% of all board minutes analyzed during the last three months of 2024 to 32.9% in the first three months of this year.
The topic declined further to 28.3% of school board meetings held between April and June, reversing several increases under the Biden administration.
“The drop coincides with the federal government instituting policies that target programs in the DEI area,” Burbio President Dennis Roche said in an email.
The Washington Times reached out to the Department of Education and the White House for comment.
Mr. Roche said his analysis represents more than 70% of the nation’s public school population. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. public schools enrolled 49.5 million students during the 2024-25 academic year.
The Burbio report cited a “federal campaign targeting DEI programs and terminology” that the Trump administration has expanded to include every level of education from grammar school to college.
President Trump has canceled Biden administration programs that supported DEI training and initiatives as a way of giving disadvantaged minorities a leg up.
The Trump administration insists that spending tax dollars on race-based programs violates prohibitions in federal civil rights law against favoring some people based on their skin color.
In an April letter to public school districts, the Education Department threatened to withhold federal funding from elementary schools that refused to end DEI programs.
Last week, the Justice Department issued new federal funding guidance that accused DEI “programs or initiatives” of violating anti-discrimination laws.
Steven N. Durlauf, a University of Chicago economist specializing in wealth inequality, said it’s no surprise that school districts have quickly retreated from DEI under these circumstances.
“I think the administration’s attacks on DEI have gone far, far beyond what may be plausibly justified by defects in such programs,” Mr. Durlauf said in an email. “They have become an effort to teach a triumphalist, inaccurate version of American history and society that ignores the deep roots of contemporary group inequalities.”
According to Mr. Durlauf and other education experts not involved in the Burbio report, it’s impossible to know how many public schools have simply renamed their DEI programs to evade the purge.
“Schools may drop the acronym, but the ideology often remains under new labels like ‘belonging,’ ‘culturally responsive teaching,’ or ‘inclusive practices,’” said Jessica Bartnick, a former Dallas Independent School District board member who started the Foundation for C.H.O.I.C.E. to mentor disadvantaged children in North Texas. “Any school that eliminates honors classes to fight so-called ‘racism,’ or adopts grading policies that ignore performance or deadlines, is still operating under the principles of DEI.”
The Burbio report noted that terms related to DEI remain “widely used in K-12, and appear in job titles, district mission statements, academic courses, district committees, and more.”
Conservatives have long rejected DEI as part of a decades-long effort to lower academic standards for Black and Hispanic students who historically score lower than their peers.
They insist that the effort to force equal outcomes for students prioritizes group identity over merit.
“Across the country, especially in K‑12 settings in conservative areas, DEI has sparked backlash from many parents and taxpayers who believe it promotes division rather than true merit and fairness,” said Julie Giordano, the Republican executive of rural Wicomico County in eastern Maryland and a former high school English teacher. “Many district officials quietly remove DEI language from agendas and communications rather than defend it, renaming it under generic terms like ‘culture initiatives.’ This is most frustrating.”
Others insist that conservatives have distorted DEI by labeling all diversity programs as reverse discrimination against White and Asian students.
“DEI was all about recognizing the importance of diversity in schools, and in the wider society,” said Tyrone C. Howard, a UCLA education professor specializing in racial equity. “The right hijacked the term, and made it to be something that it is not.”
Most education insiders predict that DEI will become a popular topic again at school board meetings the next time Democrats retake the White House.
“The Trump administration is using the language of civil rights to attack DEI, which bills itself as an extension of the civil rights struggle,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania. “Our big struggle today is over the legacy of that movement: who owns it, who interprets it, and how we go forward from here.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.