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Trump Orders Schools To Adopt ‘Patriotic Education’ in the Classroom

One of the orders, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” sought to withhold funding from any schools that teach that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory.”

Republicans have targeted universities over pro-Palestinian demonstrations that occurred on college campuses.,Bing Guan for The New York Times

President Trump signed several executive orders on Wednesday aimed at reshaping American schools, including restricting how racism is taught in classrooms, curbing antisemitism and allowing taxpayer dollars to fund private schools.

The orders are designed to advance the Trump administration’s goal of shaking up the nation’s education system, which Mr. Trump has long derided as fostering left-leaning ideologies.

One of the orders, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” sought to withhold funding from any schools that teach that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory.” It directed agencies to produce an “ending indoctrination strategy” that would focus on uprooting instruction about transgender issues, “white privilege” or “unconscious bias” in schools, and to “prioritize federal resources, consistent with applicable law, to promote patriotic education.”

Another laid the foundations to deport international students accused of “antisemitic harassment and violence” in connection to protests over the war in Gaza, part of a wider crackdown on what the administration has deemed antisemitic speech.

And a third directed agencies to search for grants and discretionary programs that could be repurposed for use by states to fund voucher programs. Such programs allocate public funds to families to pay for children's education at home or at private and religious schools.

The orders on Wednesday unleashed the Education Department to enforce penalties against schools that stray from the themes of “patriotic education” that Mr. Trump has said should be the underpinning of American history classes. And they appeared designed to send schools scrambling to check course catalogs for any content that could invite the government to rescind federal funds.

The order related to antisemitism was broad and enlisted many federal agencies in an effort to identify and punish demonstrators who caused disruptions amid nationwide protests against Israel and the war in Gaza — a group that could include students involved in campus protests.

It directed the State Department, Education Department and Homeland Security Department to guide colleges to “report activities by alien students and staff” that could be considered antisemitic, so that they could be investigated or deported.

Conservative lawmakers have urged universities to crack down on demonstrations against Israel. A report released by House Republicans in December floated the idea of deporting international students who it said expressed support for Hamas, whose attack on Israelis in October 2023 ignited more than a year of war.

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The order cited existing law, under which the government is authorized to deport a person on a visa who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization,” which the report said should include expressing sympathy for Hamas.

Under the Biden administration, the Education Department investigated dozens of colleges and public school districts over complaints of antisemitism or anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination. The department consistently sided with complainants, directing colleges to take a firmer stance against antisemitism and other forms of harassment or intimidation on campus.

Legal scholars and civil rights groups have regularly warned that federal investigations into schools over antisemitism can have a chilling effect on protected speech. But a growing number of universities, including N.Y.U. and Harvard, have changed their policies to try to respond to criticism and curb protests. Among other policies, some have adopted a definition of antisemitism that considers some criticisms of Israel — such as calling its formation a “racist endeavor” — to be antisemitic.

“It’s just crystal clear that they’re targeting people based on their viewpoint and their speech supporting Palestinian rights,” Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney with the group Palestine Legal, said Wednesday after the order was released. “And they’re trying to drag all federal departments into it.”

The second order on Wednesday directed the Education Department to end what it said were efforts in American schools to compel children “to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics.” It also condemned classroom instruction that it said had led children to “question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed.”

The order further warned that K-12 schools that defy the order could face investigation by the Education Department and ultimately a loss of federal funding.

The order also revived an effort to rewrite history syllabuses that Mr. Trump pursued during his first term. The effort, known as the 1776 Commission, is a road map created by a group of right-wing Trump allies meant to challenge how slavery is taught and portray left-wing social and political movements as subversive. The order reinstated the commission and directed the Education Department to fund it to the extent that was legal.

The bulk of federal funding to public school districts comes through the Title I program, which provides grants that help prop up high-poverty and rural schools in areas with weaker tax bases. That funding is set by Congress, and using it to enforce the president’s orders could present an uphill and possibly unwinnable battle.

But the Department also provides a slew of discretionary grants aimed at helping low-income students and minority groups, as well as students with disabilities. Many of those programs are currently under review by the agency to determine whether they defy Mr. Trump’s executive order to rid the government of “diversity, equity and inclusion” and other efforts.

Mr. Trump’s orders showed how he plans to leverage the education agency’s Office for Civil Rights, which has wide-ranging power to enforce the nation’s civil rights laws, as he seeks to empower his conservative base. The office is charged with enforcing some of the nation’s bedrock civil rights laws, and can withhold federal money from schools that don’t comply with the administration’s interpretation of them.

In the first week of Mr. Trump’s new term, the Education Department has been among the most vocal among federal agencies about its support of his plans to eradicate programs seen as “radical” and “wasteful.”

The department has sent a series of releases touting actions it had taken to comply with an earlier order to purge efforts to increase diversity, racial equity in hiring and accessibility across the government. Among other moves to, as it said, “end discrimination based on race and the use of harmful race stereotypes,” it took steps toward firing staff and identified 200 websites that it would take down.

And in an extraordinary step, the Education Department announced that the Office for Civil Rights had dismissed pending complaints people had filed to the office over efforts to ban books about race and gender. The office — which under Mr. Trump’s previous administration bolstered its stated mission to be an apolitical “a neutral fact-finder”— announced last week that it had ended what it called “Biden book ban hoax.”

The moves have been applauded by right-leaning groups. Nicole Neily, founder and president of Parents Defending Education, called the executive order a “vindication” of parents concerned about the way racism is taught about in schools, and a “tremendous first step in rooting out this poison from the American education system.”

The group had filed several complaints to the office under the previous administration alleging that schools’ diversity programs violated federal civil rights laws.

An array of organizations slammed the president’s order on classroom instruction on Wednesday, saying that it promotes distorted views of history and condemns practices that do not reflect the reality facing public students.

James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the executive order misrepresented how American history and civics are being taught. The group’s recent survey of educators “found little evidence that teachers are doing any of the things that are being banned in this executive order,” he said.

In a statement on Wednesday, Lambda Legal, an L.G.B.T.Q. legal advocacy organization, described the promotion of patriotic education as “whitewashing the chapters of our nation’s documented history related to race, gender, sexism, homophobia and related injustices.”

Mr. Trump’s third order on Wednesday directed agencies, in their review of discretionary spending, to find ways to allocate more federal funds to “expand education freedom” through voucher programs.

The order cited a National Assessment of Educational Progress report, also released on Wednesday, as evidence that public schools are failing students and that the government should fund alternative options. The report found that students’ proficiency in reading had floundered.

“Too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school,” the order stated.

Expanding school choice programs has been a key conservative education policy for years, and was a main priority of Mr. Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

Many states already have policies in place allowing families to home-school their children or enroll them in private or religious institutions using public funds. Proponents say the programs allow parents to find the education options that are best for their children and to opt out of public schools that haven’t served them well.

Critics blame the programs for hurting the public school system and diverting badly needed funding to schools that are rarely required to meet state performance standards and often produce poor student achievement.

“Instead of stealing taxpayer money to fund private schools, we should focus on public schools,” said Rebecca Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, a teachers’ union.

Zach Montague is a reporter for the New York Times covering the U.S. Department of Education, the White House and federal courts.  Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for the New York Times.

Anemona Hartocollis and Dana Goldstein contributed reporting from New York.