TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. The Department of Education is reportedly gutting its workforce. In addition to the more than 1,300 workers who were fired on Tuesday, more than 600 have accepted separation packages or were fired last month during their probationary period. This leaves the department to roughly half of its workforce, which is responsible for enforcing civil rights laws in schools, supplying student loans and grants and tracking student achievement.
These new layoffs come as President Donald Trump calls to eliminate the department altogether. At the heart of Trump's effort is a plan to consolidate what he describes as waste within the government, vowing to cut federal funding for schools and colleges that promote, quote, "critical race theory and transgender ideologies." Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Education also sent letters to 60 colleges and universities it says are under investigation for violations relating to alleged antisemitic harassment against Jewish students during pro-Palestinian protests on campuses nationwide. Joining us to talk about all of this is Laura Meckler, a national education writer for The Washington Post, who covers news, politics and the people shaping American schools. Her book, "Dream Town: Shaker Heights And The Quest For Racial Equity" is an examination of the ideals and realities of racial integration in her hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio. Our conversation was recorded yesterday.
Laura Meckler, welcome to FRESH AIR.
LAURA MECKLER: It's so nice to be here.
MOSLEY: Let's start with the backstory behind the letter that was sent this week to the 60 colleges by the Department of Education for alleged violations relating to antisemitic harassment. Remind us of what this stems from.
MECKLER: Well, all of this stems from protests that broke out on campus following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, which was then, of course, followed by the war between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And, of course, there were, you know, very, very passionate, strong, angry protests at campuses all over the country. So there's been this tension that colleges have been facing - especially last academic year, to be honest, but to some extent this year, too - about how to balance the free speech rights of the protesters against the rights of other students to be on campus and to be on campus in an atmosphere that's free of harassment, for Jewish students to feel safe. In some cases, they did not feel safe. And all of that was sort of stirring and quite active as President Trump was running for his second term. And then once he took office, he's taken a very strong step to try to essentially clamp down on colleges and force them, they would say, to take antisemitism seriously.
MOSLEY: You've actually been reporting on how the Trump administration pulled last week its 400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University. And just to remind people, Columbia was sort of the epicenter of the protest last spring. Can you tell us more about the accusations that happened there on that campus, as well as the cuts to funding - I mean, 400 million sounds like an incredibly large amount - and what that actually impacts?
MECKLER: Well, we don't have the full scope of what it impacts, but yes, $400 million is a lot of money for a university - for any university - and for Columbia University. This unfolded very quickly at Columbia. About a week and a half ago or so the Trump administration told Columbia that it was under investigation for how it was treating Jewish students and whether it was safeguarding them against antisemitism. And then just four days later, they concluded that they weren't and pulled this $400 million by their calculations in grants and contracts.
This is not normally how things are done. Normally, there's a long investigation, and there's a process by which universities can come into compliance, which is what almost always happens. In this case, they just said, you haven't upheld your duty under federal civil rights law, and therefore, we're pulling this federal funding. So it was quite dramatic, and a lot of people read it as a real shot across the bow, not just to Columbia, but to other universities around the country, too.
MOSLEY: Right. Because 60 other universities received a letter just on Monday, I would assume there probably is fear around funding cuts for those universities as well.
MECKLER: Absolutely. I mean, everybody is fearful. And I think we should put this into some really broader context here, which is that universities have been on their heels really since the start of this administration. There have been a series of actions that have been taken and that have been threatened in terms of funding and sort of general control over what they do from the Trump administration. And so universities are already feeling very frightened, unsure and, you know, frankly scrambling about what they will do if they lose all of this federal funding. Some of these schools are very dependent on federal funding through NIH research grants and other means. And the Trump administration is going about this, you know, quite aggressively as we saw with Colombia on Friday and now this threat to, as you said, 60 other universities to say, yes, you know, are also on our radar and we could do the same to you.
MOSLEY: So the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Ed sent that letter to the colleges and universities, and that office, which, under a larger proposal to dismantle the Education Department, would fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Can you share the latest of what we know about this draft executive order to dismantle the department that has been circulating? Have you seen it?
MECKLER: I have seen it. Of course, President Trump campaigned on a promise to close the Department of Education, and when he showed up on his first day, there was a draft executive order waiting for him actually that would have called on Congress to do such. We should note that the administration does not have the power to simply close the Department of Education. Only Congress would have the ability to do that. Congress created the agency, and only they can dismantle the agency. But what this executive order, the initial version of this executive order, would have said was ask Congress to come up with a plan to get Congress to eliminate the department, and in the meantime, do what you can to dismantle it, to diminish it.
And then we saw another version of the executive order floating around that did not have the part about calling on Congress to act but did say that you should do what you can to diminish the agency on your own. So it's not entirely clear what the administration's thinking is right now, but we do know two things. Ultimately, they would like to eliminate the department. Congress is not likely to do that. And absent that, they would like to do what they can to reduce its footprint, potentially take parts of the agency and send them elsewhere, although that too is legally problematic.
MOSLEY: Remind us what the U.S. Department of Education is responsible for.
MECKLER: Sure. So the biggest thing that it does is run the student federal aid program, the loans and the Pell Grants that come from the federal government. That's a huge responsibility. On the K-12 side, they administer a couple of very large grants. Now, 90% of education spending comes from the state and local governments, but 10% comes from the federal government. Some of it's from a program called Title I, which aids high-poverty schools. Some of it's from a program called IDEA, which helps cover the costs of educating students with disabilities.
And then the Department also has - as you mentioned - the Office for Civil Rights. And the goal of the Office for Civil Rights is to enforce its - more than the goal - its task, its mandate is to force federal civil rights laws, which say you cannot get federal funding if you discriminate on students or others on campus on the basis of sex, race, national origin and other factors as well. So that's their job. So those are the major functions of the Department of Education.
MOSLEY: Going back to what you said about how it would take an act of Congress to dismantle, I do want to talk with you about the ways that the administration can change the function without Congress. One of the ways is by taking some of what the Department of Education does and then having other departments handle that. Can you give us some examples of that?
MECKLER: Well, there has been an aspiration for them to do that. For instance, there's been talk - and Linda McMahon, the education secretary, during her confirmation, hearing kind of floated these ideas of moving, for instance, the Office for Civil Rights to the Justice Department, or moving, say, the Title I program to the Department of Health and Human Services, or moving the Federal Student Loan Program to the Treasury Department. However, all of these programs, in statute, are said to be housed at the Department of Education. So it isn't really clear at all to me or the experts I've talked to that they can just, on their own, try to move it. Now, maybe they will try, in which case, as you said, I think we'll likely see court action.
But I also think there's another path that's possible, which is rather than try to move these pieces around the government, is change how they're used, either try to diminish them through unilateral canceling of grants and contracts through reducing the staff, which we've already seen, a significant reduction in the staff at the Department of Education, and through changing how they use the powers of the Department of Education itself, including the Office for Civil Rights.
MOSLEY: There was an executive order that Trump put forth in February where he demanded the secretary of education to deliver recommendations to him for eliminating funding for K-12 schools that engage in the indoctrination, as he puts it, over race and gender topics. And schools are typically a reflection of their communities, and the curriculum is not set by the federal government, but states and the districts themselves. So how would the federal government enforce something like this?
MECKLER: The first thing to talk about is exactly what you were just pointing to, which is that there is a contradiction between the rhetoric that we hear from the White House, which is about returning education to the states and letting local people make these decisions and having empowering parents and all of this, and then at the same time, essentially trying to control education from Washington. So we have a real contradiction there. Having said that, how would you go about doing that? Well, the way you do it is - the argument is that when you, say, talk about race in certain ways in schools or when you talk about gender, and particularly transgender identity, in schools, you are essentially violating civil rights laws. They would say, yes, education should be controlled by school districts, but they don't have the right to violate federal law, which, of course, they don't. But there is a lot of debate about what federal law actually has to say about these issues.
MOSLEY: This idea of moving the Office of Civil Rights, which, as you mentioned, enforces Title IX and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to the Department of Justice, how would being under the DOJ change the function of that office?
MECKLER: Well, it wouldn't necessarily change anything. So the Justice Department could use the power in the exact same way that the Education Department uses the power. It would just be sitting in a different building in Washington. When you talk about dismantling the Department of Education, there's really two things to think about. One is to think about, are we diminishing what the department does? Are you cutting the funding? Are you doing less? Are you essentially pulling back on the federal influence over schools? Or are you just getting rid of the department and moving stuff around? And those are two very different things.
MOSLEY: Yes. They're two very different things, but ultimately, could the administration get what it wants through that second action?
MECKLER: I think that, theoretically, it could. I mean, it could. If they could find a way to get Congress to go along or maybe they ignore Congress and just try to do it on their own and try to spread the functions around, they would declare victory on that. I don't know how much that necessarily impacts people on the ground, whether there is a Department of Education or not. However, I do think that there's a symbolic importance to having this agency. I think the reason why it was created was to try to say that, hey, education is important, and it deserves a seat at the table when we talk about the most urgent federal priorities, and that, you know, we're going to have a secretary who has stature and who is in the Cabinet room and - with the other Cabinet secretaries and who has a voice to be a leader on education and all of these elements that come from having a department itself.
So theoretically, the Treasury Department could run the student aid program. You know, theoretically, any agency could give out grants. Theoretically, the Department of Justice could enforce civil rights laws in the context of education, just like it does in other contexts. Like, those things could happen. But the question also here around having a department is, like, what do we say that we value and what ideas and what issues do we want to have a seat at the table?
MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, we're talking to national education journalist Laura Meckler of The Washington Post about what it would mean in practice for the Department of Education to be dismantled. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today, we're talking to Washington Post national education writer Laura Meckler about the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. Although it would take an act of Congress to fully dismantle it, Meckler discusses some of the ways the Trump administration could shrink the department and how it could change the landscape of education in America. On Tuesday, the Education Department announced it was firing more than 1,300 department workers.
It's pretty interesting that Linda McMahon has taken this role as the head of the Department of Education to dismantle it. Can you kind of give us a sense of, is she working herself out of a job? Is she there just for that explicit purpose? What can you tell us about her?
MECKLER: Well, it's interesting. She's not somebody who has a strong background in education. She has a little bit of education experience. She served on a state board for about a year, and she's been a trustee of a college in Connecticut. She's obviously best known as being the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband, Vince McMahon. But the other thing you need to know about Linda McMahon is she's very close to Donald Trump. And she served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration in his first term. And she worked on his reelection, and she co-chaired his transition, and now she has this job. So, you know, she is not somebody who has to - she's a billionaire. She doesn't have to worry about a paycheck if, theoretically, the Department of Education went away. I think that, again, it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to close the Department of Education. So that's really much more of a talking point. I think that one thing - what we should be looking for is, at what point do they start pivoting away from really talking about closing the Education Department? Because the more they talk about it, if it doesn't happen, does that look like a failure on the part of President Trump? I don't think he would like that much. So I think we're much more likely to see her come in there. She's really - she's kind of a grown-up. She's - you know, before she got there, it just felt like, you know, the 20-something DOGE-ers (ph) were running the place. You know, now she's coming in, and the people who opposed her didn't so much oppose her for who she was, but more because of what the agenda was.
MOSLEY: It's also pretty interesting because when Betsy DeVos was sworn in, it was pretty clear her ideology around education. I mean, she was just such a big proponent of school choice. With McMahon, what did she indicate during her confirmation hearings would be sort of her focus around education, understanding her background?
MECKLER: You know, she basically parroted the Trump lines about education. She spoke about being in favor of school choice, which, as you said, was a Betsy DeVos priority. She talked about wanting to decrease the footprint of the Department of Education. She did acknowledge that only Congress could close it. She talked about, you know, equity and gender ideology and needing to get rid of those out of schools. She said she would look into what DOGE was doing and make sure it, you know, didn't go too far. So, you know, she had a fairly as-expected confirmation hearing.
I do think, though, that there's another interesting contrast with Secretary DeVos, because yes, school choice was her - and is still, we should say, her passion. She believes very strongly in school choice, which really didn't advance on the federal level under her tenure. But she also had a very, very different outlook about the federal role in education. She thought it needed a light footprint. So while she undid a lot of what the Obama administration did, she did not impose her own philosophical agenda. In fact, in a story I wrote last year, we looked into the creation of the 1776 Commission, which was to promote patriotic education in schools, and it had begun with Donald Trump calling Betsy DeVos up one summer evening in 2020 - and said, we've got to stop The 1619 Project. How do we ban it from schools?
MOSLEY: Which was The New York Times - right? - by Nikole Hannah-Jones list.
MECKLER: Exactly.
MOSLEY: Yes.
MECKLER: Her - yeah. It was their effort, you know, to really reframe American history around slavery and the role that slavery has played in this country in its history. And, you know, Betsy DeVos' response to President Trump was, like, no, we can't ban The 1619 Project. That's not our job. We're not here to run a national curriculum. You know, I don't like it either, but that's up to individual school districts. And that's a very different point of view that we're seeing. And that was really how she governed during her whole four years, was, like - you know, she wasn't telling school districts what to do in either direction. She viewed the federal government as having a light footprint. And now we see such a different - different - orientation, where they very much - I don't think they would have any trouble banning The 1619 Project, telling...
MOSLEY: In fact, it's banned on the state and local level in many places.
MECKLER: Right. But that's one thing. To ban it on the local level - you know, the local and state governments, that is their job to set curriculum. You know, it isn't the federal role to decide what students learn, what students have to do to graduate, what books people read. Those are not federal roles, traditionally. But under this new way of looking at things under the Trump administration is that they're defining things like this as being essentially akin to racial discrimination, that this is essentially discriminating against white people if they're forced to see American history through the lens of slavery.
Those are the sort of arguments that are being made, that, essentially, if you are pushing so-called critical race theory, if you're trying to say that the country is systemically racist, if you're saying that white people have privilege that other people don't have, all of these things gear you into the territory of a definition of racial discrimination that is very different than what we've seen in the past, essentially using the civil rights laws to try to stop what their proponents would see as efforts to try to eliminate racism. So that is a very different orientation, a much more muscular federal role that we've already seen rolled out just in these opening weeks of the Trump administration. So it's a stark contrast to the first Trump administration.
MOSLEY: Our guest today is Washington Post national education writer Laura Meckler. On Tuesday, the Education Department announced it was firing more than 1,300 department workers. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley, and we're talking with Washington Post national education writer Laura Meckler about the Trump administration's plans to dismantle the Department of Education. On Tuesday, the Education Department announced it was firing more than 1,300 department workers. Meckler covers news, politics and people shaping American schools. She came to the Post from The Wall Street Journal, where she covered the White House, three presidential races, changing American demographics, immigration and health care. She's written a book called "Dream Town: Shaker Heights And The Quest For Racial Equity." Our conversation was recorded yesterday.
Laura, I want to talk a little bit about some of the actions of DOGE. That's the Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk. We see that dismantling the Education Department is part of a larger effort by DOGE to streamline the government. They've terminated something like 89 contracts with the Department of Education, which has had an immediate impact on the Institute of Education Sciences. What have you been following on that front?
MECKLER: Yeah. Well, DOGE showed up and they just really began taking a hacksaw to a lot of different parts of the Education Department's mission. Specifically, they started with the Institute for Education Sciences, which is the research arm of the Education Department, and began just canceling grants. There's a provision in federal grants where you - and maybe others as well, where you can cancel it for, quote, "convenience," which means basically any reason we want, and that's what they did.
So these are research grants that were meant to try to figure out what's the best way of doing something. For instance, there was one grant that compared two different ways of teaching math. It was an experiment, essentially, to see which one was more successful. There also are important grants that deal with collecting data about education statistics around the country - how we know how many schools there are, how many teachers there are. What's the demographic makeup of the student body, of the teaching force? All of that information comes through this part of the agency. So that's one thing that they did.
They also began canceling grants that had anything to do with diversity, equity and inclusion. If it had any of those words in it, essentially it got canceled as being inconsistent with the administration's priorities. And you also saw them putting a lot of employees on administrative leave. Initially, they said they were going to put people on leave who did work related to DEI because they don't want that work done anymore. But they actually went further than that and put a lot of people on leave, it appears, simply because they had at some point participated in some sort of a diversity program. And this includes programs that were touted under the first Trump administration that then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos herself was a supporter of.
So essentially, if you just participated in something like the Diversity Change Agent program - which was a program to essentially help try to change the culture at the department - if you were just a everyday participant and you went to, like, a one-day training or a two-day training, you know, a few years ago, you might have been put on administrative leave. So DOGE has been quite active.
MOSLEY: Why is Trump doing this? What is his vision for education?
MECKLER: Well, it's interesting because when you listen to President Trump talk about education, he really talks about two different things, and they're somewhat in tension. The first thing he talks about is, quote, "returning education to the states," which is a - somewhat of a puzzling thing to say because education is already run by the states and local governments to a very large effect.
Now, there was a time not that long ago - you probably remember the No Child Left Behind Act that was passed under President George W. Bush, where the federal government did have a much bigger role. But that was actually rolled back near the end of the Obama administration. So really, the federal footprint today is somewhat light. But he does talk about returning education to the states.
And the second thing we hear about from him is getting essentially, you know, wokeness and gender ideology and equity and race conversations essentially out of the schools. He wants to use the power of the federal government to influence the way that schools talk about those subjects and the policies that they use. So, you know, you can see how these are somewhat in tension with one another. You have the federal government on one hand saying, well, this should be run by the states - on another hand saying, yes, except for this, that and the other.
MOSLEY: Can you remind us, as it pertains to the culture war issues and anything related to DEI, some of the origins of that? I know a few years ago, we were really talking about critical race theory within K through 12 education. I've also heard President Trump talk about the mothers, the parents, who are - really been pushing, like, sort of this lobby to push against DEI in schools. What can you tell us about that?
MECKLER: Yeah. So the term critical race theory, which became sort of a basket term for everything that conservatives did not like about the conversation around race in schools - but what it really is about is taking as a given that there is systemic racism in the country. And, you know, for some people, that's an obvious. Of course there's systemic racism. And for other people, that's quite offensive. So that was essentially the dividing line that we saw.
We really saw a lot of this being churned up following George Floyd's death in May of 2020, and a lot of schools felt a moral imperative to really address questions of race and equity and to talk about what was happening in our country. And then what you had was essentially a backlash to that, where you essentially had mostly white people who were saying, you know, this is offensive to me. How can you say - are you saying I'm racist? They didn't like any insinuation that they were part of the problem. And I think that that's essentially where you saw a lot of pushback. Most of this really began on the local level at school board meetings. Then you started seeing parent groups form.
I should actually say that those parent groups were initially formed in response to COVID policies and - people who were angry that schools were closed too long. They were angry that their children were being required to wear masks, and they were fighting against that. And then those groups essentially morphed into fighting about the content of these conversations around race. So - and then that escalated to the state level, where you - you know, sort of led by Florida and Governor DeSantis there. You saw a lot of legislation essentially controlling what could be taught. You couldn't have certain conversations about race or gender in classrooms. There were new restrictions on what books were allowed to be read. There were efforts to take books out of the library. Sort of all these culture wars were percolating all through the Biden years, essentially, and sort of teed up for Trump when he started running for reelection.
MOSLEY: Did this also really ramp up the conversation around school choice? I know that Trump has really talked about that. I know Secretary of Education - former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was a big proponent of school choice. Can you tell us a little bit more about Trump's vision as it relates to school choice?
MECKLER: Sure. I do think there is a direct relationship between the pandemic and school choice as well as what we are now seeing from President Trump. The frustration around public schools, some of which really were closed for a very long time, as long as a year and a half in some cases, where, well, the schools were open, but they were operating remotely, there was huge frustration around that, and that all teed up long time efforts. These go back decades to try to essentially allow public money to pay for private schools and today, also, for home schooling through various types of voucher programs. And we've seen an explosion of these in conservative - mostly conservative states around the country of really big, expansive voucher programs that, in many cases, are available to all families, whereas they used to be limited by, say, income or maybe they were targeted to students in certain parts of the state or maybe to students with disabilities. Now they're essentially open to anybody where you can get thousands of dollars in state funding to apply to something other than public school. So that's been happening over the last few years - a very robust school choice movement around the country. And now, President Trump also campaigned on bringing that to the federal level, and there is an effort right now to add a federal school choice program into a big-budget bill that is being negotiated now that can pass through Congress with a simple majority in the Senate as opposed to the normal threshold of 60 votes for new programs like this. The leading idea that proponents are pushing hard is a tax credit. It's, in fact, a 100% tax credit for donations to what are called scholarship granting organizations. And then you would essentially get that money back through the tax code when you pay your taxes.
MOSLEY: This sounds like it would be a big upset to the public school funding model.
MECKLER: Well, there are certainly public school advocates who are very worried about that. They're worried on two levels. They're worried about sort of the opportunity cost of it. Like, if we have billions of additional dollars to spend on education, they believe it should be spent on the public schools and not on private schools. They also worry about - and certainly on the state level, which is where a lot of the money for public schools comes from - that if you are spending all this money on voucher programs, will there be enough for the public schools? Will you have to cut public school spending at some point? And then lastly, the concern is does this essentially lure kids away from public schools to private schools? Now, of course, advocates on the other side would say that that's their choice, they're making a choice about what's best for their kid. But from the public school point of view, every child who leaves, they take their money with them - they no longer get that per pupil funding. So this is a big deal for public schools.
MOSLEY: How does a school choice program impact rural areas where private schools are scarce?
MECKLER: Yeah. Well, they're much less likely to be able to take advantage of it because, as you say, there are fewer private schools, so kids just have fewer choices about what to do. And also in rural areas, we should say that often, the schools are the biggest employer and really the center of the community. So they play a very important role. In fact, you know, for many years, we really saw reluctance of Republicans representing rural areas in many states to support school voucher programs for that reason. However, that has somewhat shifted, and there has been more support from those Republicans over time for these programs. But yeah, I mean, school choice does not have the same kind of impact in a rural area that it does in a suburb or in a city where there are a lot more options.
MOSLEY: Can you talk about the impact of cuts to students with disabilities?
MECKLER: Yeah. Well, the federal government requires that schools - public schools offer students with disabilities a free and appropriate education. And as part of that, they have agreed to pay for part of the cost. Now, they've never paid the amount that they said they would. But they do pay some of the costs and help school districts fund these services, which can be quite expensive, depending on what a particular student's situation is. But the idea is that we want students with disabilities to not just be ignored for - you know, for many years before this, they were just kind of - schools would just refuse to educate them, and they're no longer allowed to do that. They do have to provide education to students regardless of their disability.
MOSLEY: OK, let's take a short break.
If you're just joining us, we're talking to national education writer Laura Meckler of The Washington Post about what it would mean in practice for the Department of Education to be dismantled. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today, we're talking to Washington Post national education writer Laura Meckler about the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. Although it would take an act of Congress to fully dismantle it, Meckler discusses some of the ways the Trump administration could shrink the department and how it could change the landscape of education in America. On Tuesday, the education department announced it was firing more than 1,300 department workers.
One of the interesting things noted in Project 2025 is to narrow institutional funding to historically Black colleges and universities. One of the things President Trump was lauded for during his last presidency was making permanent and annual funding commitment of millions to HBCUs. It's just interesting to be at this point where there seems to be such a culture war over things that are very specific to people of color, other identities. Have you been watching or following this, and how likely could that commitment go away?
MECKLER: Well, we haven't seen that be threatened, at least not yet. So I don't necessarily think that's specifically on the chopping block. But, you know, I would never rule it out. It could be. I mean, I think you have to ask the question if they're saying essentially that, for instance, affinity group, say, like, a group that gathers people together with a certain identity for support and socializing and, you know, maybe frank conversations that - they essentially are arguing that these are contrary to federal law because they're exclusionary based on race. So does that same argument get made for an HBCU? I don't think so. HBCUs admit people of all races, even if they are focused on one. So it is - they're certainly not violating federal law, but it's kind of in a similar neighborhood, you know, to what we're hearing.
MOSLEY: Yeah, it just complicates the conversation because if you're asking an HBCU to be compliant against federal mandates around DEI, for example, and it's tied to funding, it just puts all educational institutions in a really precarious bind as it relates to the curriculum that they're setting forth for their students.
MECKLER: Well, a hundred percent. And that, I think, is sort of the idea here. They want everybody to be questioning everything they do. One thing that struck me during Linda McMahon's confirmation hearing is she was asked, would a Black History Month celebration be OK? And she said, yes, it would be, and she said a event on Martin Luther King Day - that would be all right as well. But then she was asked, so what about a Black history course? And she said, well, I don't know. I'd have to see the details. And now there are Black history courses at schools all over the country. So I thought that was a - somewhat of a red flag. My eyes, you know, perked up when I heard that, if eyes can perk up. And when I heard that - when she said that - because I was like, well, a Black history class might be contrary to federal law. You know, that's a new idea.
MOSLEY: It just opens up a lot of things. I mean, an Indigenous history class - I mean, America is, quote-unquote, "a melting pot" of so much, and the history is so rich. It just opens up everything.
MECKLER: The thinking of the administration is that, you know, we shouldn't be separating people out by race. So are these departments doing that? Is this contrary to their interpretation of federal law? We had the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights issue a letter - what's called a Dear Colleague letter - which was their interpretation of the Students for Fair Admissions' case against Harvard, you know, a couple of years ago, which had to do with affirmative action and admissions. And they wrote this letter, though, very broadly suggesting that essentially any consideration of race in any way, in any program at a university or a K-12 school could be contrary to federal law. And this letter had people scrambling like, what does this mean? And then they issued a follow-up, where - which somewhat narrowed it.
But all of this confusion that we're talking about - throughout this whole conversation, we're talking about confusion. We're talking about general ideas that then get - seem to - applied in, you know, somewhat shocking ways, such as, all of a sudden, Columbia University losing $400 million in funding or a grant program that had a lot of bipartisan support just sort of disappearing, you know, or people losing their jobs. Like, all of this stuff is extremely destabilizing and I actually think is sort of part of the plan in some ways, because they want people and universities and school districts to think twice before they do any of this stuff.
MOSLEY: You know, I'm just curious. I mean, calls for education and reform - I mean, they've been happening really since even before the formation of the Department of Education. So this is not necessarily something that feels new or novel. I mean, there is a desire from both sides - it's bipartisan - to really look and streamline and provide a better way for educational opportunity in the United States. And some see some of the roadblocks and the bureaucracy as a block to that.
MECKLER: For sure. I mean, I don't think anybody really disagrees that we want kids to have the best possible start in life and have the most opportunities. I think that that's very true. And there has been, in recent years, some more conversation about the actual substance, about how do we achieve that? For instance, there's been a deep conversation about how reading is taught and promotion of something called the science of reading, which is something that incorporates phonics much more directly than we've had in recent years. And that's, like, a conversation about the real heart of education. Like, how do we actually improve outcomes for kids? How do we get them on a firmer footing?
There also is more - there actually is bipartisan support for things like apprenticeships and, you know, more robust and more effective - career in technical education in high schools for kids who are not going to maybe end up going to college. So there's - there are things out there to talk about the actual education of it all, as opposed to the rest of this, which is very much about, you know, politics and culture and the like.
MOSLEY: Laura Meckler, thank you so much for your reporting and your time.
MECKLER: Thanks so much for having me.
MOSLEY: Laura Meckler is a national education writer for The Washington Post. Our conversation was recorded yesterday. Coming up, TV critic David Bianculli reviews "A Thousand Blows," the new historical drama series from "Peaky Blinders" creator Steven Knight. This is FRESH AIR.
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