The new federal Department of Education would like me to report any instances of diversity, equity and inclusion in my school district. There’s a link now on the department’s website where I can file a report.
In some parts of the country, funding is being withheld on account of these so-called violations. I’m not much of a tattle-tell, so I would like to share openly what I sent to the DOE on the topic. Here’s my report.
First off, I’ve been a teacher in Chollas-View for 27 years. I taught elementary grades at Chollas Mead Elementary for 25 years, and now I teach English language arts and history at Millennial Tech Middle School.
Many of my students are now children of former students, and their families trust me to do right by them, again. For all of my time there, roughly 97% of my students have been students of color, and roughly 97% of them have qualified for free-and-reduced lunch, which are both representative of the community in which they live.
And this brings me to the first part of my DEI report: diversity.
I’m going to have to give the Trump Administration and the new Department of Education a low grade in that category. That’s because survey data across the nation from many types of schools say the same thing. As many as 91% of parents and students want diverse instructors and staff teaching their children. Moreover, research is conclusive that diverse staff members, representing their student population, typically have higher expectations for those students.
And that’s a problem I have with the new DOE’s anti-DEI mandate, because if we’re hiring the status quo, which is currently 80% white teachers, then we aren’t doing much for the diversity that my parents and kids have been hoping for. We aren’t putting folks in classrooms that show all great U.S. kids they can be anyone when they grow up.
In fact, by virtue of this new policy, we’re going in the opposite direction. Is this an accident? Is this policy purposeful? It doesn’t matter to students nor their parents who want it, does it? So I give diversity an F.
But let’s move on to inclusion. Sadly, this isn’t much better. It appears to this teacher as though the new Department of Education doesn’t just want me to report inclusion, they’d like me to teach without any funding to do it.
Since the American with Disabilities Act, inclusive practices have been a growing part of our normal school operation. That matters to this CODA, or child of a deaf adult, because back in the 1960s, before the ADA, inclusion to my deaf mother was to stick a gigantic headphone over her head and plug it into a large box which she wore on her chest.
I can still remember Mom telling me how she’d come home and scream at the wall, confused by the instructor, teased mercilessly by the other students. It’s a far cry to the services she could have been offered today.
So, what is the new DOE doing to fulfill the promise of legal changes since my mother’s time? Currently, they are withholding money, $6.2 billion nationally to be exact. This will particularly harm schools like mine where nearly one-fourth of all students are designated special education. But it will also harm any student with special needs, anywhere. So for inclusion, also an F.
And that leads me to equity. Because you see there is a reason why my school has been designated as a Title 1 school. The simple fact is that the money our neighborhood collects in taxes because of the local control funding formula just isn’t enough to provide anything akin to equitable services for our great kids. This is nothing new, nor is it limited to my school. In fact, Title 1 nationwide is meant to bridge the gap in funding in both rural and urban schools nationwide so we can bridge other gaps.
Even so, the new DOE can’t seem to get over the fact that a lot of this money goes to students of color, and will fund programs, academic and social, that over a hundred of my students utilize. Worse, the new DOE wants me to report any instances when these programs, meant to bridge gaps in all kids who need it, target the very students that they are designed to help. So equity also gets an F.
I’ve taught a long time, and I’ve taught a long time in a Title 1 school. It’s nothing new to see policy that doesn’t exactly assist my school in things like academics, equity, diversity or inclusion. What is new is that the federal government would now like teachers to tattle-tell on each other whenever we try to do this very thing. In fact, recently an op-ed was published here in a San Diego newspaper by a man asking us to do that very thing.
Perhaps we need to calibrate our grades, San Diego. Diversity, equity and inclusion is meant for those who don’t have the opportunity that others do. That means its meant to help any of us. Therefore, the new DOE gets an A in helping folks who don’t need that opportunity, and a large F in helping any of the great children and families I serve in Chollas View, as well as white students in rural Title 1 schools around us.
In other words, the DOE intends to keep the status quo, instead of making it more inclusive, diverse and equitable. And therefore, I have no intention of assisting in efforts to harm my diverse and inclusive students, or any students, anywhere.
Thomas Courtney is a teacher and author living in southeast San Diego. In 2021, he was selected as the San Diego Unified Elementary District Teacher of the Year. He is currently the Millennial Tech Middle School teacher of the year and secretary of the San Diego Unified Exemplary Teacher Advisory Council. His latest book, Teaching 102, will be available soon.
