The Department of Education has ended 18 grants totaling $226 million to Comprehensive Centers that focused on DEI consulting. One application emphasized the importance of integrating DEI into all deliverables. A 2019 study, costing $8 million, failed to measure the centers' impact.
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@DOGE - Department of Government Efficiency
The Department of Education has terminated 18 grants for $226mm to Comprehensive Centers, which provided consulting services with a large focus on DEI. One Center application stated: โEmbedding DEI reviews across all deliverables and materials ensures it is not a one-off task specific activity.โ
A 2019 study (which itself cost $8mm) was โnot able to measure the causal impact of the centersโ workโ.
Examples of DEI content from a center:
Video Transcript AI Summary
Instead of using binary language like "girls versus boys" when splitting into teams, try using inclusive language such as "party people," "everyone," "humans," "y'all," "friends," or "family."
Consider the intersections of gender, race, and sexual orientation, especially when working with young people developing their identities. As educators, we should prepare ourselves to be responsive to our students' developmental stages and growing identities, particularly when teaching literature. Expect pushback when challenging the status quo with equitable practices and policies. This resistance indicates that you are making progress in shifting established norms.
Speaker 0: Asking if staff members could move away from the binary and not just say things like, you know, let's split into two teams, girls versus boys. Why not instead use, non heteronormative language like, hey, party people, let's get ready to do this activity. Everyone, humans, y'all, friends, family, however you wanna do it.
Speaker 1: And the intersections of that in terms of my gender, my race, and my sexual orientation as a as a, young person developing in my sexuality. There was a lot of intentionality, I think, in certain spaces in my professional career where we thought about sexuality as a developmental reality. And as a language arts teacher in reading literature, what type of preparation am I preparing myself for to be responsive to where my students are at developmentally, as well as in terms of their growing identities? And if pushback arrives, and that's probably within the equity context and indication, that you're moving towards shifting practices and policies that are undoing the status quo.
Video Transcript AI Summary
We exist within systems designed to assimilate us, a legacy of settler colonialism where formal education aimed to erase indigeneity. This reality persists today.
It's time to reject the "white gaze," that internal voice pushing us to conform. This isn't about individual white people, but about dismantling the settler colonial structure and patriarchy that dictates our behavior. Once we remove that gaze, who fills the void? For me, it's my ancestors who take precedence, guiding my actions and perspectives.
Speaker 0: The white gaze or the white man's gaze, the white man sitting on her shoulder telling her not to write those things. We are, I'll just be bold and claim undeniably sitting in systems that are meant to assimilate us. The whole founding of formal education in these territories was meant to erase indigeneity scrubbed clean to participate in a settler society. Why bring that up now? Well, we still live in a settler colonial reality.
Flick that white man off your shoulder. And it's not about individual white people, individual white men. It's about the settler colonial reality and the settler patriarchy that pushes us to move and behave in certain ways that what if that wasn't there? Because I realized once you flick that the settler gaze, the person holding that settler gaze off your shoulder, who takes the place? My ancestors took the place.
