Episode 114: Defending Educational Equity: Exposing the Threats of Project 2025

In this episode, the speaker delves into the concerning proposals within Project 2025 that aim to limit federal civil rights enforcement and change student discipline policies, which would disproportionately harm marginalized students. The speaker highlights the critical role of the disparate impact standard and warns that its elimination would further marginalize vulnerable populations. The discussion covers the potential long-term impacts, such as the perpetuation of the school-to-prison pipeline and widening achievement gaps. The speaker urges listeners to become "equity warriors" and make informed voting choices to support leaders and policies that prioritize fairness and inclusion in education.

Transcript

Dr Almitra Berry: 0:00

Steve, welcome back equity. Words, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the 3e Podcast. I'm continuing on with our assignment to evaluate the impact of project 2025 on public education and marginalized learners. For those of you who've been with me for this entire period of time, you know the background, just briefly, for those of you who are new that project 2025 is a massive, 900 page document, but I am focusing only on one chapter, and that's 44 pages that have to do with public education, specifically big picture to eliminate the Department of Education. So picking that apart Today, our focus is on the proposal within those 44 pages to reduce federal civil rights enforcement and change student discipline policies and doing so how Doing so will disproportionately harm our marginalized students. That's particularly our students of color, LGBTQ, plus students and students who are living with low financial wealth, or students of poverty, as they would say so, 44 pages in a small section of that is a lot of information packed in about civil rights. We're going to look at that student discipline, the impact on marginalized learners. Little bit of critical race theory, how that plays a role here, the long term impact of what they propose to do and what are some of the broad implications for educational equity. So please stay with me so that big idea proposal to limit the or to eliminate the department of education includes limiting how the Department of Justice enforces civil rights specifically for our children, and their focus is on court actions and removing administration tools like resolution agreements. One of the things you need to understand is a term called disparate impact, and that is an Obama administration policy they want to get rid of, eliminate the disparate impact standard, and that by doing that, it would make it harder to address systemic discrimination. So the standard helps to uncover policies and practices that disproportionately affect our marginalized groups, even when there is theoretically or there's no intentional discrimination. This standard is crucial for making sure that we have equitable treatment in school discipline as well as other educational practices. The disparate impact standard ensures some accountability, because when we can highlight the disparities that we see in terms of outcomes, let's take, for example, suspensions and expulsions, right? We can highlight disparities now and show when students of color, for example, when black boys or brown boys for example, are disproportionately suspended as compared to white boys for the same exact offenses, we can see that, and we have accountability to making sure that that is corrected, as long as we have that standard. But when you get rid of that disparate impact standard, there way to check it with with accountability, we can make sure that policies get revived and so our sense of color in particular are not harmed. That standard also helps to create a more level playing field, because it will help to address or helps to address systemic inequities. It works to help close achievement gaps, again, because we disaggregate data based on things like race or title one status or primary language, and so we get greater opportunities for students of color to have academic excellence. But by removing that standard, by removing the disparate impact standard, as they propose, and they again, the Maga Republicans, and I don't care what Donald Trump says, he doesn't know. We know he lies through his teeth. This is his plan. Removing that standard would hinder efforts to identify and rectify disparities, so bias practices could go on unchecked, further marginalizing children of color, black and brown children, indigenous children, and the educational inequities that they already suffer from would just get greater. The disparate impact standard is a vital tool to promote fairness and prevent discrimination in our educational settings. So part of the plan is moving the Office of Civil Rights from underneath the Department of Education to the Department of Justice. And we all know that Donald Trump wants to control the Department of Justice, so it would limit its role to litigation and student. Students would have greater difficulty reporting and addressing discrimination. That's the big idea. I want you to keep that disparate impact standard in mind as we go through some of the other challenges, or challenges issues, the problems, what's wrong with Project 25, and how it would harm our children. So their plan is to revoke student discipline rules, get rid of any rules that prevent discrimination, and particularly to get rid of any rules that address racial disparities in discipline, removing data collection from disciplinary practices will not help us see where there is inequity, where there is racism, because that's what it is. We will not be able to see that black boys and Latino boys are suspended or expelled more frequently than their white peers, because we will not have the data to look at it and keep in mind, bear in mind that sometimes the data is about the only thing keeping the adult behaviors in check. This would have a disproportionate impact on our children who are marginalized, our students of color. Think about not having civil rights enforcement for children of color. Think about not having any accountability to discipline policies the existing racial disparities that we see now, now when there is accountability, now when we do have a standard take that away, all it's going to do is contribute to a school to prison pipeline we have worked so hard to eliminate that hasn't happened yet, but at least reduce the number of children that go from school to prison. When we get rid of those checks and balances, we're going to see that pipeline bursting full again, increasing disciplinary actions always impacts black and brown children more than anyone else and indigenous children. We'll see changes in academic achievement. We'll see an increase in dropout rates. We'll see a widening achievement gap, and we'll see reduced access, even though it's not perfect now, further reducing access to advanced placement, honors and gifted programs, educational opportunities that every child deserves to have access to and success in, but we will have a no way of checking and B, no accountability when our children are discriminated against based on their plan. So what does that do when we look at at the implicit bias that already exists in school discipline, and understanding that implicit bias comes from somewhere deep down inside of you, and very often people don't recognize that they are operating from a place of implicit bias. So sometimes it's hard to call out, hard to catch, hard to recognize for an individual, let's say, an individual teacher or an individual administrator, unless they have done a lot of work on changing their behavior and understanding what implicit bias is, where it lives inside of them, and how they act on it. But implicit bias has a tremendous impact on racial disparities in school discipline. We tend to people tend to see children based on the biases that live inside of them. So if you are constantly bombarded with these messages that black and brown bodies are dangerous, then when you see a black or brown child acting out, you operating from that bias, as opposed to maybe this child had a rough day at home. Maybe something's going on at home, I should be concerned about this child's welfare if your response is to protect yourself because you believe deep down inside of you that those are dangerous people, no matter what your response is going to be to send them to the office, to write them up, to suspend them. Negative stereotypes have a huge role in disciplinary decisions, and we can see that based on a lot of historic data, who preschool teachers are looking at, by the way, more often than not, they're watching very closely black boys, even when those boys are not engaged in any misbehavior. Let's extend that to another group of marginalized learners. Our LGBTQ students, protections for these children will be rolled back, eliminated. People would be free to discriminate against students because of their sexual orientation. Or their gender identity. Think about the harm that's done to these children, who already very frequently, are dealing with some challenges by running counter to societal beliefs, sometimes by coming to grips with who they are and what they believe and how they feel project 2025 would deny them a safe and inclusive educational environment. And then we have our children who live in poverty, our children who qualify for free and reduced lunch, our children who qualify for Title One services, which, by the way, Title One would pretty much go away reducing federal oversight and reducing federal funding will disproportionately impact our low income students. And if you're low income and black or low income and brown or low income and Native American indigenous, you are doubly impacted. Eliminating reducing funding and eliminating the federal oversight will will lead to nothing less than a reduction in educational opportunities. And if we look at who this impacts by the numbers, let's not understand who are children identified for Title One are 28.3% almost a third of our indigenous or Native American children are identified for title 120, 7.8 black. Percent of black children are title 120, 2.7% of Latino children are title one. And while only 9.6% of white children and 7.2% of Asian children are identified as low income or title one, they are still impacted the plan, what they offer, what they propose, matches very clearly the rhetoric of the Maga right and the history of racism in America. You have to hear what they're saying. Read what they printed. Don't just listen to me. I encourage everyone to read those 44 pitch, just 44 pages, skim it, if nothing else. And if you're not a reader, you don't want to skim then just listen to these episodes where I'm picking all of this apart, and then tell a friend, text a friend, talk to a neighbor. I still have more to go. Stay with me. One of the things you hear from the Maga, right, quite recent, quite, quite frequently, is this ridiculous idea that we are teaching critical race theory in K 12 education. So critical race theory, if you've not heard previous episodes, or you're still new to this topic, is an academic framework that examines how how racism is embedded in our legal systems and in our policies. What they propose would simply open the doors to having racism further embedded in our legal system, in our school policies and our education policies or school discipline policies. Project 2025, views, critical race theory as a threat. It is a threat because for educators, for concerned citizens, for advocates, for you, my equity warriors, for you to understand what racism is, how embedded it is in our systems, in our practices, in our policies, allows us to raise awareness to it and fight against it. So to the Maga right, to Trump, to the people who are behind project 2025 understanding that theory threatens them, because if they can get rid of it, then they can do what they want to do. We have to hold on to that understanding the reason that we need to be looking at data and the reason we need to have accountability, because they want to eliminate CRT, because of its influence in improving K 12 education. See eliminating targeting critical race theory, CRT aligns with all of their broad efforts to limit federal involvement in education, because what they really want, as I've discussed before, is a market driven system people who have money paying for an education, while middle class America, while children in poverty are. Coming from homes that cannot pay 20,$30,000 a year in tuition to go to a private school. And so we'll be left in more over, more underfunded, less funded than they already are public school systems. And then, when we reduce, further reduce, should they be able to further reduce federal oversight? There are a lot of long term effects to that. Think about just the increase in exclusionary discipline practices. That means pulling children out of class, suspending children at home, expelling children, removing them completely out of the public education system for things as small as let's see. If you all remember this one, a young man just outside of Houston, Texas that was expelled because his locks his hair. Should it be taken down? Would touch his collar. They're doing it already, and they're getting away with it. They will perpetuate, they will exacerbate a school to prison pipeline. And when we do these things, when we remove children from the classroom for supposed disciplinary problems, whether it's your hair is too long or looking at a teacher the wrong way, defiance, for the most part, has been eliminated. That was such a subjective policy for those of you who do not remember, teachers used to be able to remove children from class. Administrators were able to suspend students because a teacher would say they were defiant. And defiant in some places, was something as simple as looking a teacher in the eye, looking someone in the eye when they addressed you. You know that the the one the cops use all the time, I felt threatened because they looked at me there, they'll be able to remove children from classrooms again. If this goes through, and every time we take a child out of class, there is an economic impact in that child's future. They will not have as high an earnings level as an adult as they would if they got a good, high quality education. Their decreased earning potential and increased societal cost, because when we do not have people who are able to work and take care of themselves, that is a cost to society as a whole. What they would do would completely reverse all of the progress that's been made in implementing evidence based approaches to discipline and implementing restorative practices in schools. Just say bye, bye to that. But there are broader implications for Educational Equity here, this idea, this this desire embedded in Project 2025, to decentralize and privatize education, as I mentioned, expanding school choice and Educational Savings Accounts vouchers right that would widen the gap between our between our students who are middle class students who are Title One disadvantaged students and their affluent, wealthy peers. What is think about this? What is the long term impact of a reduced educational system and increased discrimination? So I'm going to ask you, as you think about your assignment and what you can do where you are, in your place, with your voice, with your contacts and connections, be an equity warrior advocate for the protection of civil rights and education, because the proposed changes in Project 2025 will dismantle vital protections that ensure equity for marginalized students, for black students, Brown students, indigenous students, Girls, LGBTQ plus students, students of low financial wealth by reducing federal oversight. Achievement gaps will be widened. School to prison pipeline will be perpetuated. We have to stand together and vote. And I always tell you to vote, but I'm going to be even more specific today, you need to vote for Kamala Harris for president and vote for Democrats all the way down the ballot. Look at who's running for school boards. Examine who those people are and who is funding them. Don't think for a minute that people, all people, run for school board out of the goodness of their heart. They are funded. They are backed by organizations, sometimes even hand selected by organizations. So who are they? What do they stand for, and who's paying for them to run? Make sure that your state and local representatives will demand accountability and support policies that promote fairness and inclusion for our children. If you are community discussions going on around you, get engaged in those and support organizations that are fighting for educational justice. We know that together, we can ensure that every single child, regardless of their race, their gender, their socioeconomic status, every child, has access to a safe and equitable learning environment. And if we do this right, if we use our voice to vote the right way. We won't have to worry about accepting these this thing that we cannot change. We, our vote, will work to make sure that we have an education system that we i.