President Biden’s Department of Education has shelled out at least $1 billion on various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives since 2021, according to a new report.
Researchers unearthed some $490 million on DEI hiring efforts, $343 million on DEI programming and $170 million on DEI-related mental health, according to a study from Parents Defending Education (PDE), a conservative organization that rallies against what it deems “harmful agendas” in the classroom.
Analysts at PDE combed through troves of public data detailing the grants doled out by the department, which sported a $238 billion budget in fiscal year 2024.
“The only people or groups to benefit from the enormous amount of grant funding are the universities, administrators, and DEI consultants, at the expense of children’s education,” PDE researcher Rhyen Staley told Fox News, which first covered the report.
“This needs to change by placing children’s learning at the forefront of education, instead of prioritizing race-based policies and DEI.”
PDE cited a litany of examples in its report, including a $21.5 million grant to Montgomery County Schools featuring professional training for instructors on “equitable instructional and disciplinary practices to increase student achievement and decrease incidences of inequitable disciplinary practices.”
Another example provided was Ypsilanti Community Schools in Michigan, which obtained $15.5 million in grant funding and spent $19,500 on a consultant for one day for professional development centered around “culturally responsive” teaching.
The school system also dished out $19,250 for copies of that consultant’s book.
The School District of Philadelphia received a nearly $4 million grant for a restorative justice program that entailed support from Fania Davis, sister of Angela Davis, a former communist party member whom PDE cast as a “radical.”
Other instances cited included a $4 million grant used to back a three-week summer camp tethered towards “student identities underrepresented in the computing field,” a $1.2 million grant for training 40 elementary school teachers how to “enact equity-centered education” and a $306,209 grant for teaching school counselors “trauma-informed, antiracist social-emotional learning.”
Researchers at PDE cautioned that the figure likely doesn’t account for the full scope of DEI funding by the Education Department because they pored through grants specifically for DEI, social-emotional learning (SEL) and youth activism.
“These numbers are based on available data and not exact. The number of districts and students is likely much higher,” the report caveated.
Possible DEI efforts that were not marked as such may have flown under the radar while districts that had multiple grants were only counted once.
There were at least 229 such DEI-related grants distributed since 2021 to at least 42 states as well as Washington, DC, per the report.
President-elect Donald Trump in his Time magazine “Person of the Year” interview published Thursday called for a “virtual” but not full closure of the Department of Education, which was first established in 1979, though that could face hurdles in Congress.
In the meantime, he’s tapped Linda McMahon as his secretary-designee for the department. Conservatives have long clamored about axing the Department of Education, going all the way back to former President Ronald Reagan.
The department oversees federal student loans and aid such as Pell Grants, issues various grants to schools, gathers statistics on education across the country, investigates civil rights concerns and more.
Trump’s incoming administration has eyed a broader overall of the federal government. He’s tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as co-heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to tackle bloat throughout the government. DOGE is technically not an actual government department.
DEI programs have long been under fire from conservatives, particularly in education.
The US public education system ranks 12th globally in terms of development, according to US News and World Report.
In the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, US students placed 18th overall globally, despite test scores slipping in some areas from prior years.
Almost a third of children in US public schools were underperforming grade level expectations during the 2023-2024 academic year, per the National Center for Education Statistics.
The Post contacted the Department of Education for comment.
