The nation’s two largest teachers unions condemned President Trump on his first day back in office as he ended Biden administration policies that let biological males compete in girls’ sports.

Mr. Trump rescinded 11 Education Department documents expanding Title IX discrimination protection to transgender students as part of a sweeping executive order he signed Monday night making it U.S. policy to “recognize only two sexes, male and female.”

The order followed several Inauguration Day speeches Mr. Trump gave pledging to end his predecessor’s race and gender identity initiatives. His executive order blocks federally funded schools from expanding sex-based discrimination policies to include sexual orientation or gender identity.

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, accused Mr. Trump of aiming “to divide us and ignoring what we know is needed to ensure every student has the opportunity and resources to grow into their full brilliance.”

She added that students “need to be respected for who they are, no matter their race, place, background, sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Mr. Trump pledged repeatedly on the campaign trail to end Biden administration policies requiring that K-12 schools let students use the pronouns, restrooms and sports teams corresponding to their chosen gender identity.

Hours before signing the order Monday, the president vowed again in his inaugural address to “end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”

“We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based,” Mr. Trump said. “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, criticized the remarks.

“Rather than unifying people and building on America’s best qualities, Trump delivered a speech that was laden with divisiveness, showing that he is the president of only some Americans,” she said.

Besides reversing gender identity policies, Mr. Trump has pledged to downsize the Education Department and promote school choice in his second term. The unions strongly oppose both ideas.

Jeanne Allen, an Education Department senior official during the Reagan administration, said she expects more orders from Mr. Trump in the upcoming weeks.

“He said he was going to do it, he did it, and those are important signals for people,” Ms. Allen, founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, said Tuesday. “We’re hoping that he will very soon also require that federal funding not discriminate against the choices of parents who want to send their children somewhere other than their local public schools.”

According to some education analysts, Monday’s executive order could lead to new guidance from the Education Department as the Trump administration promotes deeper changes to federal oversight of public education.

To keep his other campaign promises, the president must negotiate with lawmakers to untether decades of federal programs from the ever-expanding department. Federal statutes immunize those programs against presidential executive orders and any intervention by Linda McMahon, Mr. Trump’s nominee for education secretary.

Michael Hansen, a senior fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, said it’s hard to predict how far Mr. Trump will get in his agenda to make federal education funding “conditional on purging ’woke’ elements from school curricula.”

“Realistically, I think the federal education policies most likely to get passed are those that could be packaged into a tax bill only to be passed through the reconciliation process, which significantly narrows the scope for any proposed actions that would need congressional approval,” Mr. Hansen said in an email.

Some conservative parental rights groups welcomed the executive order.

“It reestablishes the importance of biology and protects parental rights,” Sheri Few, president of U.S. Parents Involved in Education, said Tuesday. “This decision is a push-back against excessive federal overreach and ensures that schools are free from government-imposed ideologies.”

• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.