Chalkbeat

Trump moves to strip Maine of federal education funding in unprecedented tactic

2025-04-11T20:09:05+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education said it is moving to strip federal K-12 education funding from Maine due to what it called the state’s refusal to comply with Title IX, the law that bans sex discrimination in education.

The Friday announcement followed a department investigation into the state’s policies governing transgender athletes. Those investigations determined that the state was in violation of Title IX, which the state has denied.

“The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” the department said in a statement announcing the move.

A Maine pole vaulter cleared the bar to win the state title. Waiting below was Donald Trump.

The move represents an unprecedented attempt by the federal government to speedily take away K-12 funding that has been appropriated by Congress and is firmly grounded in federal law. President Donald Trump has made trans athletes a major political issue and has used the federal government to root out gender-affirming policies in the early days of his second term.

The federal Education Department said it is starting an administrative proceeding to take away Maine’s K-12 funding, including formula grants — which include funding streams like Title I for high-poverty schools and IDEA grants for students with disabilities — as well as discretionary grants. Maine’s state education department has spent nearly $400 million in federal funding on elementary and secondary education in recent years, the Maine Monitor reported. In addition, the federal department said it has referred the results of its Title IX investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice for “further enforcement action.”

The Department of Health and Human Services had already referred its investigation that found Maine in violation of Title IX to the Justice Department.

Earlier on Friday, the Maine state attorney general’s office told the federal Education Department that the state would not sign a resolution agreement drafted by the Trump administration in the wake of the investigation. That proposed agreement features several pages of demands, including that Maine must strip any trans girl who’s ever placed in a Maine girls sports competition of her title and give it to the athlete behind her, along with an apology letter.

The federal Education Department did not immediately respond to several questions from Chalkbeat.

Andrew Ujifusa is a story editor at Chalkbeat.

Trump signs executive order that aims to close U.S. Department of Education

2025-03-20T21:43:36+00:00

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President Donald Trump has signed a much anticipated executive order that he said is designed to close the U.S. Department of Education.

The order Trump signed Thursday tells Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities” to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” At the same time, the order says McMahon should ensure “the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

Despite polling to the contrary, Trump said in his speech Thursday that closing the department is a popular idea that would save money and help American students catch up to other countries. He also said his order would ensure that other federal agencies take over major programs now housed at the Education Department, like those for students from low-income backgrounds and students with disabilities.

“Beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department,” Trump said. “We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good. We want to return our students to the states.”

President Donald Trump speaks during an event at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, when Trump signed an executive order intended to close the U.S. Department of Education.

The executive order represents a symbolic achievement for Trump, who for years has expressed a desire to close the department. Yet the president has already radically transformed the department without relying on such an order. McMahon announced massive layoffs and buyouts earlier this month that cut the department’s staff nearly in half.

Beyond the rhetoric, it’s unclear how exactly the order will impact the department’s work or existence.

By law, only Congress can eliminate a cabinet-level agency authorized by Congress; White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt seemed to acknowledge as much Thursday before Trump signed the order, when she said that the Education Department will become “much smaller.” And during his Thursday remarks, Trump expressed hopes that Democrats as well as Republicans would be “voting” for the department’s closure, although prominent Democratic lawmakers have blasted the idea.

The order does not directly change the department’s annual budget from Congress. And federal law dictates many of the Education Department’s main functions — changing those would require congressional approval that could be very hard to secure.

Still, Trump’s move to dramatically slash the department’s staff could impact its capacity and productivity, even if officially its functions remain in place.

At her confirmation hearing, McMahon promised to work with Congress on a reorganization plan. Project 2025, a prominent blueprint for conservative governance from the Heritage Foundation released before Trump’s second term, says that along with closing the Education Department, the federal government should move the department’s education civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice, while the collection of education data should move to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In a statement on Thursday, McMahon said closing the Education Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them.

“We will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs,” she wrote. “We’re going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working with Congress and state leaders to ensure a lawful and orderly transition.”

The executive order could be challenged in court. Many of Trump’s efforts to remake the federal bureaucracy are already tied up in litigation, including the Education Department layoffs.

The executive order notes that the Education Department does not educate any students, and points to low test scores on an important national assessment as evidence that federal spending is not helping students.

“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them,” the order says.

Trump order is triumph for department’s foes

The Republican governors of Florida, Texas, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, Tennessee, Idaho, and Nebraska were present during the signing ceremony. Trump said they “badly” wanted the federal government to give their states more control over education.

“Probably the cost will be half, and the education will be maybe many, many times better,” Trump said. States that “run very, very well,” he said, could have education systems as good as those in Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway — countries that tend to outperform the United States on international reading and math tests.

The Education Department administers billions of dollars in federal assistance through programs such as Title I, which benefits high-poverty schools, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which offsets the cost of special education services.

The department also administers financial aid for college students, shares information about best practices with states and school districts, and enforces civil rights laws. And it oversees the school accountability system, which identifies persistently low-performing schools to extra support.

States and school districts already make most education decisions, from teacher pay to curriculum choices.

Conservatives have wanted to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education since it was created by President Jimmy Carter and Congress in 1979, and Trump talked about doing so in his first administration. But those efforts never gained traction.

Conservatives say that for decades the department has failed to adequately address low academic performance. They also see the department as generally hostile to their political and ideological perspectives.

The executive order says that McMahon must ensure that “any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology,” a reference to policies intended to make schools more welcoming for students of color and LGBTQ students.

The department has moved to publicly target and root out diversity-focused practices in schools in recent weeks. And the department has already threatened to withhold federal funding from Maine for allowing trans athletes to compete on teams that match their gender identity.

Public education advocates say critical expertise will be lost and students’ civil rights won’t be protected if Trump further diminishes the department. They also fear that a department overhaul could endanger billions in federal funding that bolsters state and local education budgets.

They say they’re already seeing impacts from layoffs, which hit the Office for Civil Rights, Federal Student Aid, and the Institute of Education Sciences particularly hard.

Even before McMahon took office, the U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting initiative run by billionaire Elon Musk, canceled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research grants and contracts.

The Education Department already was one of the smallest cabinet-level departments, with around 4,100 employees, before the layoffs. With buyouts and layoffs, the department now employs just under 2,200 people.

Chalkbeat senior national reporter Kalyn Belsha contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Andrew Ujifusa is a story editor at Chalkbeat.

Trump Education Department revives DeVos-era Title IX sex discrimination rules

2025-01-31T18:19:41+00:00

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President Donald Trump’s administration told schools Friday that Title IX law barring sex discrimination will once again be subject to federal regulations from over four years ago.

The move effectively eliminates protections for gender identity in schools adopted by former President Joe Biden’s administration.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter intended for school leaders, an official with the U.S. Department of Education wrote that enforcement of Title IX is now based on “the principles and provisions of the 2020 Title IX Rule.” That means Title IX enforcement will no longer be based on the regulations adopted in 2024, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor wrote.

The Trump Education Department’s guidance comes in the wake of a Jan. 10 ruling by a federal judge that tossed out Biden Title IX rules.

In explaining the department’s rationale, Trainor cited an executive order Trump signed earlier this month that defined sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.” The 2020 rules developed under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos treated sex as a binary, but did not define it.

“President Trump ordered all agencies and departments within the Executive Branch to ‘enforce all sex-protective laws to promote [the] reality’ that there are ‘two sexes, male and female,’ and that “[t]hese sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” Trainor wrote. “Title IX must be enforced consistent with President Trump’s order.”

The 2024 regulations were praised by transgender students and LGBTQ advocates as enshrining critical protections related to student pronouns and transgender students’ school facilities such as restrooms. But critics said Biden’s rules improperly distorted and expanded Title IX’s stated protections against discrimination “on the basis of sex.”

Trump made criticisms of transgender rights a key element of his 2024 campaign, and schools have become a battleground for LGBTQ rights and related cultural issues in recent years.

Trainor’s letter technically does not carry the same force of federal law or regulations. But it does indicate the administration’s general view of the issue, and also conveys how the department’s Office for Civil Rights will approach relevant Title IX investigations into schools. Those two factors could heavily influence how school districts approach the matter.

In his letter, Trainor said open Office for Civil Rights investigations initiated under the Biden Title IX rule “should be immediately reoriented to comport fully with the requirements of the 2020 Title IX Rule.”

The 2020 regulations were controversial due to how they addressed sexual assault complaints. Unlike the Biden administration, the 2020 rules did not say that Title IX protections extend to gender identity.

In his letter, Trainor said the January decision from U.S. District Court Judge Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky correctly ruled against the Biden administration’s position that “discrimination on the basis of sex also includes discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, and sexual orientation.”

However, discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes has been struck down in previous court rulings. Those decisions have also formed the basis for legal protections for gender identity.

It remains to be seen how the Trump Education Department’s view of sex stereotypes, which could cover a broad set of issues in schools, influences its enforcement of Title IX.

Andrew Ujifusa is a story editor at Chalkbeat.

Philadelphia student scores on state reading and math exams down from pre-COVID levels

2022-12-05T22:33:45+00:00

Philadelphia students’ scores this year on state standardized tests dipped from pre-pandemic levels in 2019, underscoring the gap between the district’s current performance and its long-term academic targets, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

The decline on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, was more pronounced in math, where approximately 16.2% of students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or better on the exams administered in the spring of 2022; in 2019, 21.6% of students scored proficient or better. In English Language Arts, 34.7% of students in those grades were proficient or better this year, down slightly from 35.7% in 2019.

Those drops highlight the pandemic’s disruptions to students and schools since early 2020; schools in Philadelphia did not fully reopen for in-person instruction until the 2021-22 school year. The scores also show how hard it will be for Philadelphia to meet the targets it set for the past school year, and for the next several years.

In late 2020, as part of a multi-year plan, the district set a goal that by 2026, 52% of students in grades 3-8 would achieve proficiency on the state math exam. Its interim proficiency target on the math exam for the 2021-22 school year was 28.7%. The actual rate for the year was 12.5 percentage points lower.

The district also set a goal that by 2026, 65% of students would achieve proficiency on the state ELA exam, with an interim target of 42.5% for 2021-22. The actual rate for 2021 came in 7.8 percentage points below that.

To emphasize the importance of students achieving proficiency in reading by third grade — a key benchmark for many researchers and policymakers — the district also set a specific goal for 62% of third graders to score proficient on the state exam by 2026. Just 28.2% of Philadelphia third graders scored proficient or better on the PSSA this year, compared with 32.5% in 2019. The interim target for this year’s PSSA was 39.3% proficient.

Philadelphia school officials have yet to officially release district-wide PSSA results. But the Pennsylvania Department of Education published results for individual schools across the state. Chalkbeat’s analysis of the Philadelphia district results is based on that school-level PSSA information, which suppresses proficiency data for groups in which fewer than 11 students took a particular test.

The district declined to validate or otherwise comment on Chalkbeat’s analysis on Monday.

Pennsylvania did not administer the PSSA in 2020 due to COVID. Although the state did give the PSSA in 2021, officials warned that student participation was relatively low due to COVID-related disruptions, and that therefore results were not truly comparable to scores from 2019 and previous years. However, those 2021 scores did show notable declines in proficiency from 2019.

To a certain extent, the scores are similar to Philadelphia’s results this year on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally administered, high-profile series of tests commonly known as NAEP.

Philadelphia’s fourth and eighth grade reading and math scores either declined or did not significantly change on NAEP this year compared with 2019 NAEP results. The only statistically significant decline on NAEP in Philadelphia from 2019 to 2022 was in fourth grade math.

Statewide scores on the PSSA, which Pennsylvania released Nov. 28, also reflect the struggles of the last few years.

In 2019, 60.9% of students statewide in grades 3-8 scored proficient or better on the English Language Arts test, while just 54.6% of students reached that level this year. In math, the decline was more pronounced: While 42.4% of students achieved proficiency in 2019, just 34.4% did so this year.

Eric Hagarty, Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of education, acknowledged in a statement that scores statewide have not rebounded to pre-COVID levels. But he also said that “student performance is generally improving year-over-year” and that schools are working hard to help students recover from COVID’s effects.

“We expect student performance will continue to improve as students and educators proceed with a more normalized, uninterrupted year of in-person learning,” Hagarty said.

Chalkbeat Philadelphia Senior Writer Dale Mezzacappa contributed to this story.

Andrew Ujifusa is a story editor at Chalkbeat. Contact Andrew at aujifusa@chalkbeat.org.