CASEY RYAN: Trump’s Education Department Slashes DEI Waste After PDE Report 

Parents Defending Education (PDE) published a groundbreaking report in December exposing over $1 billion of waste that the Department of Education (ED) spent on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) grants for K-12 schools during the previous administration. President Donald Trump and his team noticed and took immediate action.

During a time when student achievement was collapsing, the federal government spent taxpayer dollars funding ideological hiring practices and indoctrination. Of the total amount wasted on DEI grants, the government spent nearly $490 million on race-based recruitment and training practices. ED spent an additional $343 million on DEI programming and youth activism with another $169 million on DEI mental health training. 

Rather than provide America’s youth with the tools they need to survive in the real world, the previous administration wasted an indefensible sum of money funding a far-left wish list of ideas as students suffered. 

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) published a report in January revealing the drastic decline in student achievement nationwide. 

Fourth-grade students saw a two-point decline in reading from 2022 to 2024. That drop increases to five points when comparing last year’s score to 2019. Eighth-grade students saw the same decline in reading and now one-third cannot read at a proficient level. In mathematics, eighth-grade students scored eight points lower in 2024 than in 2019. 

The DEI grants did not help struggling students in the least. On the contrary, the NAEP data showed that the bottom completely fell out for the students who struggle most. One look at some of the districts that received the largest DEI funding exposes how misplaced the ED’s priorities were. 

Ypsilanti Community Schools in Michigan received $15.5 million in grant funding. Yet only a measly 3% of high school students are proficient in mathematics within the district. The School District of Philadelphia is not much better. The Pennsylvania district received nearly $4 million in grant funding yet only 14% of elementary and middle school students are proficient in mathematics. 

Trump and his team took notice of PDE’s report and is using it as a foundation to clean up the ED’s wasteful spending. 

On the same day PDE published the report, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) shared it on X.

DOGE then made two major announcements on Feb. 10: ED terminated 29 DEI grants worth $101 million and terminated 89 contracts totaling $881 million. 

This news was followed by the department announcing $600 million in cuts to DEI training programs for teachers on Feb. 17. Examples of terminated DEI training included taking “personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities (e.g., racism)” and teaching educators to dismantle so-called racial bias. 

Two days later the department announced a cut of an additional $266 million of grants originally intended to “improve instructional materials and educational outcomes.” Instead, the grants were used to promote racist ideas such as telling teachers to “flick that white man off your shoulder” and explaining how schools are a system of “white supremacy.” 

In his recent speech to Congress, Trump celebrated the work accomplished by DOGE and ED in cutting DEI waste, highlighting the elimination of “$101 million for DEI contracts at the Department of Education.” 

With the help of DOGE, ED is working swiftly to eliminate DEI waste and far-left political ideology from the agency to ensure that our nation’s education system once again works for students – rather than serving as an instrument of indoctrination. 

PDE will continue to proudly serve as a leader in identifying and calling out governmental waste to ensure those in charge have the tools they need to eliminate any and all corruption in our education system. 

Casey Ryan is a writer and investigative reporter at Parents Defending Education.

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