04.30.19

By:  Nicole Gaudiano
Source: Politico Pro

House education chairman blasts Trump administration over diversity, equity

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott said Tuesday the Trump administration does not promote diversity and equity in education and cited a laundry list of policies that he said are moving the country in the wrong direction as school segregation worsens.

Scott, (D-Va.), also called out a “conservative Supreme Court that is likely to strike down school diversity policies rather than approve them.”

“How many children have been disadvantaged because of our failure to desegregate schools? How many adults have been impoverished just because we have failed to uphold a Supreme Court decision rendered 65 years ago?" he said during a hearing held ahead of the 65th anniversary of the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education.

Policies Scott targeted included Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ decision, early in her term, to eliminate a grant program to support school districts in creating strategies to increase school diversity and improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged students.

“That program would have helped local jurisdictions develop desegregation plans that could withstand constitutional challenges,” he said

He also criticized the administration’s rescission of Obama-era guidance designed to boost diversity in classrooms and campuses, attempt to delay implementation of a rule to address racial disparities in special education programs, dismissal of more than 1,200 Obama-era civil rights investigations and scrapping of school discipline guidance intended to curb racial disparities.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, the committee’s ranking Republican, noted Democratic criticism of the Department of Education’s enforcement of the civil rights law.

“But the reality is Secretary DeVos is following the letter and spirit of the law and regulations, the Secretary is thoroughly investigating discrimination claims and acting swiftly when those claims are found to be true,” Foxx, of North Carolina, said in her opening statement.

In an appeal for school choice, Foxx said the legacy of Brown should be to “empower parents with the ability to choose the right school for their child and eliminate the ability of the state to consign children to low-performing schools with no means of escape.”