Just as she has with transgender students and disabled students, Betsy DeVos is targeting racial minority students – again.
The Education Secretary held two separate listening sessions with the goal of rolling back Obama-era guidance designed to protect racial minority children from being disciplined at higher rates than non-minority children. The guidance was created in 2014 to help stop Black and other minority students from being suspended at high rates, and to break the school-to-prison pipeline.
DeVos chose Wednesday, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to hold the meetings.
The first session included participants interested in keeping the guidance protections. Among them, the Dept. of Education announced, were the National Education Association, the Association of American University Women, the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Several teachers and administrators were also included, but No students were, and some organizations were effectively barred from participating.
“Groups like the National Women’s Law Center sent DeVos a letter slamming what they called ‘the exclusive and non-transparent approach’ of the summit,” HuffPost reports. “The letter was co-signed by groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Center for Transgender Equality. It expressed the groups’ support for the guidance.”
Senior policy analyst and director of education policy for the Leadership Conference, Liz King, “described the morning meeting as ‘frustrating and underwhelming.’ King spoke directly to Education Department officials about how this administration’s actions are having a negative impact on school climate, especially for LGBTQ and immigrant students. She urged DeVos to maintain the existing guidance,” HuffPost reported.
The second group, which wants the guidance protecting racial minority students rescinded, included a right wing think tank, the Manhattan Institute, which for decades has advocated for charter schools and privatization of government programs.
Other participants included lesser-known educational groups, several teachers and former teachers, and one student.
Many groups were not represented at all.
“King said it was ‘was glaringly apparent there was no one from the disability community, the LGBTQ community, the Native American community, the Latino community, or the immigrant community in the room.'”
DeVos has previously attacked minority students.
One of her first acts was to rescind guidance from the Obama administration detailing how schools could and should protect the civil rights of transgender students. She then rescinded 72 documents designed to help explain to administrators how to protect the civil rights of disabled students. And in October she began work to rescind guidance designed to ensure minority students are not placed in special education classes at a disproportional rate to other students, and that schools are funding special education classes appropriately.