Trump’s New Executive Order: Discipline for a Whiter, Harsher School System
The April 23 Executive Order revives racialized punishment, attacks trauma-informed practices, and puts the DOJ and RFK Jr. in classrooms.
Today, Donald Trump unveiled the Department of Education x Department of Justice collab from hell - an Executive Order titled “Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies.”
And just so we’re clear: this EO isn’t just rhetoric. This order gives marching orders to multiple federal departments.
It says...
Within 30 days, The Secretary of Education must issue new federal guidance to state and local education agencies about school discipline.
Within 60 days, the DOJ and DOE are required to start coordinating with governors and state attorneys general (which means we’re going to be calling state representatives, not federal reps.)
Within 90 days, the Department of Defense must revise its school discipline code to reflect this bullshit in the schools that serve military families.
Within 120 days, a multi-agency report must be delivered to the White House detailing the reach of “discriminatory equity ideology” in public schools.
Oh yes - they brought back their favorite DEI/DEIA rebrand: “Discriminatory Equity Ideology.”
In case you need to relive the horrors of the executive order they mention here - here you go.
Let’s start with Section 1 (the “Purpose and Policy” part) and I’ll just say it plainly: this entire section is a racist’s fever dream dressed up with government jargon.
The EO opens with this line:
“The Federal Government will no longer tolerate known risks to children’s safety and well-being in the classroom that result from the application of school discipline based on discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology.”
In other words, acknowledging racial disparities in how students are disciplined is now being framed as a danger to kids.
The EO goes on to slam the 2014 Dear Colleague letter from the Obama administration, which basically said, “If your discipline policies are consistently and disproportionately harming/suspending/expelling Black and brown kids, something is off, and you need to figure out why.”
The executive order twists that into this claim:
“The letter effectively required schools to discriminate on the basis of race by imposing discipline based on racial characteristics, rather than on objective behavior alone.”
Nope.
I pulled some data for us:
Black students make up 15% of public school enrollment but over 38% of all school suspensions. (U.S. Dept. of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2018)
Black preschoolers (yes, preschoolers) are 3.6 times more likely to be suspended than white preschoolers. (OCR Civil Rights Data Collection)
Students with disabilities are twice as likely to be suspended as their non-disabled peers. (U.S. GAO, 2018)
Black students lost 103 days of instruction per 100 students due to out-of-school suspensions vs. 21 days for white students. (A 2021 study from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies)
This isn’t because Black students are inherently more “disruptive.” It’s because we’ve built systems that punish them faster, harsher, and more often.
This is the reality Obama’s 2014 guidance was trying to address. But Trump’s EO wants us to pretend that racism ends when you stop measuring it. Just like they wanted us to stop testing for COVID to lower the numbers…
Let’s step away from data and into real life:
In Florida, a 6-year-old Black girl was handcuffed, arrested, and fingerprinted after throwing a tantrum in class. She was in first grade.
In Louisiana, one district had a population where most students were white…but Black students were five times more likely to be suspended.
A 6-year-old autistic boy in California was repeatedly suspended for “disruptive behavior” directly linked to his disability. Meanwhile, white students showing similar behaviors received IEP support or classroom aides.
Trump’s EO then pulls a quote from his 2018 Federal Commission on School Safety… *collective vomiting*
If you’re not familiar with this Commission, it was formed in 2018 under the Trump administration and chaired by then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. It was formed as a response to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and staff were killed.
Mind you, there were no educators, students, mental health professionals, gun reform advocates, or anyone from Parkland on this Commission.
It basically was tasked to find anyone to blame for school shootings other than the NRA or how easy it is for kids to access firearms. The Commission focused heavily on school discipline policies. Of course, the Right is a special kind of racist bunch, so we ended up with a politicized report that blamed equity-based discipline for violence in schools.
And he brings it up again in this EO:
“Because of the 2014 letter, schools ignored or covered up… misconduct in order to avoid any purported racial disparity in discipline numbers.”
There’s no national evidence to back that up, by the way. What does make schools safer is:
Smaller class sizes
More mental health staff
Culturally responsive teaching
Restorative justice and trauma-informed practices
I’ll give the Trump admin this: somebody clearly taught them about scaffolding. Republicans have mastered the art of stacking executive action and toppling just the right dominos in just the right order to bulldoze their agenda through. It’s terrifyingly effective. Because this didn’t start today.
Let’s look closely at Section 3 of this executive order - “Ensuring Commonsense School Discipline Policies.”
“Within 30 days… the Secretary of Education, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall issue new guidance… regarding school discipline and their obligations not to engage in racial discrimination under Title VI…”
As usual, it sounds like they’re protecting students of color from racial discrimination. But when read within the context of this EO (and the January 29 EO it builds on), it means schools using things like trauma-informed approaches, racial bias audits, or restorative justice are now at risk of being labeled as “discriminatory.”
Remember: they are flipping Title VI inside out.
“The Secretary of Education shall take appropriate action… against LEAs and SEAs that fail to comply…”
“Appropriate action” is vague on purpose. This could mean threats to withhold federal funding, refusal to approve grants, or federal investigations for race-conscious discipline practices.
“Within 60 days… coordinate with Governors and State Attorneys General…”
This is how a federal ideology becomes state-enforced compliance. By looping in governors and AGs, this EO ensures red states have the political cover and coordination they need to:
Pass their own anti-CRT or anti-equity discipline laws
Investigate local schools and educators
Pressure down district superintendents and school boards
The involvement of state attorneys general (some of whom are already using their offices to target inclusive books, DEIA programs, and Section 504) is especially concerning.
“Within 90 days… the Secretary of Defense shall issue a revised school discipline code…”
This EO wants to normalize a new federal standard for what discipline should look like. And by testing it in schools run by the Department of Defense (which serve military families), the administration creates a controlled environment to pilot a new, rigid discipline framework.
If it flies there, it can be quietly scaled up.
That also means the children of military families (already navigating instability, trauma, and relocation) may soon be subject to less flexible, more punitive, and less inclusive discipline policies. Yikes.
Let’s zero in on 3(e)…
(i) Inventory of all Title VI investigations since 2009
Starting under Obama, and continuing under Biden, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) took racial disparities in discipline seriously.
Finally, people were acknowledging the fact that racial disparities in discipline often reflect systemic discrimination, not just individual behavior.
The investigations analyzed by Trump’s regime will include:
Why Black students were suspended at rates up to 5x higher than white students for the same infractions
How “race-neutral” policies were being unevenly applied in schools across the country
Whether students with disabilities or English learners were being disproportionately punished
How discipline practices were pushing students out of schools and into the school-to-prison pipeline
(ii) Assessment of nonprofit orgs promoting “discriminatory equity ideology”
This is a political hit-list in the making.
Remember: “discriminatory equity ideology” = DEI.
DEI = “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and often + A (accessibility.)
This is a setup to find and defund any group that helps schools do things like:
Teach about racism or bias
Train teachers to work with kids who’ve experienced trauma
Support LGBTQIA+ students
Offer restorative justice programs
Provide social-emotional learning (SEL)
Help Black, brown, disabled, immigrant, and low-income students feel safe and supported in school
These small nonprofits or community-led programs could lose their funding or be banned from working with schools for doing work that helps kids who are most at risk.
Even if they don’t lose their funding, this EO sets the stage to scare districts out of working with these critical groups.
(iii) Survey of “non-equity” alternatives
The Trump administration is telling federal agencies to find alternatives to anything equity-related and start building a menu of what they think schools should be doing instead.
Equity: the quality of being fair and impartial
Need I remind you - this section loops in RFK.
If you’re removing discipline practices that name race, gender, identity, trauma, or systemic harm - you are not making things more fair.
(iv) Model policies rooted in “traditional virtues” and “American values”
They love their coded language:
Allow me to translate: They want to bring back unwavering obedience, respect for authority, traditional gender roles, nationalism, Christianity, colorblindness, etc…
I got into this in my Stack about how different generations experienced school and the consequences of things like these old-school, authoritarian discipline policies.
I’m talking: zero-tolerance policies, reinforcing hierarchical power dynamics between teachers and students, punishing “defiance” without asking why a student is struggling, and framing racial, gender, or cultural discussions as dIvIsIvE or aNtI-aMeRiCaN.
So what do we do?
Ask your local school board or superintendent:
- “Is our district planning to change any school discipline practices in response to the April 23 executive order?”
- “Are trauma-informed, culturally responsive, or SEL-based practices being reviewed or replaced? Will they be?”
- “Will our discipline data still be disaggregated by race, disability, and other subgroups?”
Ask your state education officials:
- “How will you protect equity-based discipline practices in our schools from federal overreach?”
- “Do you intend to collaborate with the DOJ or implement any of the model policies from this order?”
And educators and parents: we need to work together.
Keep receipts. If your district starts rolling back restorative practices or telling you SEL is banned, ask for it in writing. Share it.
Know that you have allies. Trauma-informed, culturally responsive educators are not going quietly.