Education Department Slashes $600M for ‘Divisive’ Teacher Training Grants

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced on Monday that it has terminated $600 million in grants for teacher training programs, including “Dismantling Racial Bias” and “Centering Equity in the Classroom.”

The canceled grants went to institutions and nonprofits that used taxpayer funds to “train teachers and education agencies divisive ideologies,” according to the department. Some of the training materials were on far-left topics like Critical Race Theory, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), social justice activism, “anti-racism,” and instruction on white privilege and white supremacy.

“Additionally, many of these grants included teacher and staff recruiting strategies implicitly and explicitly based on race,” the DOE said.

One slashed grant application example required participants to “take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities,” like racism, and “critically reassess their own practices,” the department described. Another was for professional development workshops and equity trainings on topics like “Building Cultural Competence,” “Dismantling Racial Bias,” and “Centering Equity in the Classroom.”

Other examples provided by the DOE include an application responding to “systemic forms of oppression,” one providing “targeted practices in culturally relevant and responsive teaching abolitionist pedagogies and issues of diversity in classroom management,” and another to “provide spaces” to help teachers “confront biases” and “have transformative conversations about equity.”

“It’s hard to overstate how radical these teacher trainings are — we are talking about forcing teachers to talk about their race at work, asking educators to ‘take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities,’ promoting abolitionist teaching practices and defining equity as equal outcomes,” Director of Outreach at Parents Defending Education (PDE) Erika Sanzi reacted in a statement.