By Shaunna Harrington
President Trump is gunning to weaken our K-12 public schools, and that should outrage all of us in the Commonwealth. Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Education announced all education institutions must eliminate DEI programs in 14 days to maintain federal funding.
The Trump administration wields DEI as a bogeyman to scare people into believing it is causing grave injustices. But the bogeyman is no longer frightening when we talk about what diversity, equity and inclusion actually mean in our K-12 public schools in Massachusetts.
Our commitment to diversity means we make sure kids from non-majority groups do not feel invisible, excluded, devalued, or unsafe. It means we celebrate multiple cultural traditions and teach kids to respect people different from themselves. We express our commitment to diversity in anti-bullying policies. We express it in curriculum that incorporates Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, suffragists, laborers, and other groups that too often were left out.
Our commitment to equity means we believe in fairness. It means we recognize that one-size-doesn’t-fit-all, and that we need to provide different kinds of supports to kids for everyone to be successful. We express our commitment to equity by providing services to students with special needs and students learning English. We express it by helping kids understand why their classmate with autism needs an aide. We express it by advocating for school funding formulas that help equalize spending across districts despite differences in local tax bases and family income levels.
Our commitment to inclusion means we believe all kids deserve to feel a strong sense of belonging in school. We express our commitment to inclusion by making sure all kids feel known and valued. We express it by making our school buildings accessible to people with physical disabilities. We express it by excusing students from school, or providing them with extensions on schoolwork, for them to observe a religious holiday the school calendar does not recognize.
Our K-12 public schools in Massachusetts are stronger because of our commitment to the values of diversity, equity and inclusion. Talk to your family members, neighbors and colleagues about what these values really mean in our K-12 public schools. Let your local school board know you support policies and practices that support these values. Tell your elected officials to fight Trump’s plans to diminish K-12 public education. Our kids are counting on us.
Shaunna Harrington, PhD is a Watertown resident and a Teaching Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Northeastern University where she leads the teacher preparation programs.
If diversity meant only “anti-bullying policies”; if equity meant only “providing services to students with special needs”; if inclusion meant only “making our school buildings accessible to people with physical disabilities”, we would have unanimity of opinion. Indeed, those protections are guaranteed under law.
That is not all DEI means, however, and why so many families are relieved that President Trump opposes its less laudable goals. In the very letter Dr. Harrington links to, the Trump Administration states unequivocally that “discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is illegal and morally reprehensible.” Yet we find that “colleges, universities, and K-12 schools have routinely used race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming”. “Under any banner,” the letter declares “discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal.” How is it inclusive to “teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not”, as the letter cites; to “stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes”? As Orwell might have written “Division is Unity” or “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” (Oh wait, he did.)
The Massachusetts Family Institute lists other 180s President Trump has called for: “he has reinforced protections for women’s sports, ended federal support for chemical and surgical gender transitions for minors, and ensured that K-12 schools prioritize education over political indoctrination” (see MaFamily.org, under education). One is free to disagree or dispute these initiatives (or counter-initiatives), but many people welcome them as long overdue.
Speaking of timing, it is unfortunate Dr. Harrington chose to represent teachers’ indoctrination as a net-positive so soon after the disgrace of the Mass Teachers Association (MTA) linking to the basest of antisemitic tropes in their pro-Palestinian curriculum. It’s all over the news, but the Boston.com story of Feb. 14 is the most sympathetic to the MTA’s position. Accusing two Democrat legislators in the Democrat-dominated state legislature of “McCarthyism”, playing the victim, is a poor defense for being caught in the act of promoting the very discrimination they claim to oppose. But as the story also relates, it appears to be longstanding MTA policy. Accusing Israel of “genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza” but two months after Hamas launched a pogrom from Gaza, murdering over a thousand, kidnapping hundreds, and committing other atrocities not fit to be repeated in a family newspaper—and then withdrawing back to Gaza to hide in hospitals, mosques, UN outposts, private homes—that takes a special sort of depravity one can only view with awe. I admire the nerve, the chutzpah, but please spare me the lecture. The MTA lacks the moral standing.
A brief update on the subject. DEI on one hand, antisemitism on the other.
Massachusetts teachers’ union under fire for alleged antisemitic educational materials
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/massachusetts-teachers-association-alleged-antisemitism/
And , thank God the US Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action based on race for college admissions in June 2023. The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does matter. DEI(B) does not.
I am rather pleased to see DOGE’s evisceration of DEI grants to the DOE. At least my Federal tax dollars are not being wasted for this anymore. But my State and City tax dollars are.
WPS got about $5.5M from DESE in 2024. Not clear how much of this will be gone in 14 days if DEI is allowed to continue. We’ll see.
And this from two famous DEI gurus:
Ibram X. Kendi/Robin DiAngelo Excerpt: “White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview. Racism is the norm; it is not unusual. As a result, interaction with White people is at times so overwhelming, draining, and incomprehensible that it causes serious anguish for People of Color. Furthermore, racism is essentially capitalist; capitalism is essentially racist. To love capitalism is to love racism.”
Very inclusive, indeed. Are we indoctrinating our students with this rubbish?
CEO Bill Ackman wrote at length about DEI; small quote follows:
“Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist,”
https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1742441534627184760
Key word here is “unequal outcomes” as Equity in DEI supports equal outcomes regardless of input, performance, qualifications. Sounds fair, doesn’t it? Transgender competitors in women’s sports just came to mind.
As to the rest, Diversity, Inclusion (and Belonging!! in WPS), the applications for it are all over the place, to the point that it is reminiscing of a well known character: “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Hence the mess we are in.
I’m sure you are equally thrilled with DOGE firing all the people who manage our nuclear weapons and the response to the bird flu (remember the price of eggs which was supposed to drop on day one of the Golden Era?)
Musk is a nightmare. His actions have already caused significant damage to real people and real problems, and it will take a long time to rebuild after this catastrophe. And it’s nowhere near over yet. MAGA is on a rampage.
Your rant against diversity, equity, and inclusion (all of which you apparently abhor) isn’t worth the keystrokes to respond.
I do not rant. I am not even excited right now. And facts are on my side. Language definitions can be difficult. You are missing that Watertown added Belonging to its DEI platform. Read about it.
Thank you, Shaunna, for pointing out how important DEI is and how it actually impacts our students. Your letter hits the mark on so many points. Let’s hope our state can stay strong and will have enough funding to keep doing the good work that it’s been doing.
I agree.
Well said. We are lucky to live in a state which values people and doesn’t seek to pit them against each other. That also describes Watertown, my former hometown!
Thank you Dr. Harrington for your clear explanation for what DEI actually represents and stands for. As a white woman living in Watertown, I have been working as an anti-racist educator for most of my adult life. My first life experience with discrimination based on race came when I was a teenager working with a group, the Revitalization Corps, seeking to bridge the divide between inner city Hartford and suburban West Hartford, Ct. I was volunteering during the summer in the 1960’s when Civil Rights riots were occurring across the country. One day, a group of us, all Black except for me, were walking on the quiet street to get sodas at a nearby store, when a police car rolled by and tear gassed us. I saw first hand how Black people were treated differently because of the color of their skin. That never would have happened if it was an all white group with one Black person. Since then, I have learned about the many ways that people of color are treated differently from white people through red lining, bank loans, job discrimination, etc. etc.
There is a quote that I think applies here: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” (source unknown). I choose to use my privilege to advocate for people who are discriminated against and who have not (historically or currently) had access to the resources, advantages and privileges that I, as a white woman, have had. As an educator, I encourage all of my fellow community members to look deep into our hearts and think about how and where we benefit from our institutions and social structures and make sure that ALL of our community members can access the same benefits and advantages. Once we ALL have access and are free from discrimination, then we will have achieved an inclusive community.
“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”
Thomas Sowell
That’s exactly what I was thinking. White people are so used to having preference that to some of them equal treatment seems like discrimination.
The commenter above likes to tout meritocracy. Look around in your travels throughout the world and you will see that, at best, meritocracy is imperfect.
There are tons of people who get jobs or other opportunities for reasons other than merit. They have connections, or their family does. The belong to the tribe in power. They live in the right neighborhood. Etc, etc. etc.
Trying to balance that out is tricky business, I admit. But to do nothing only allows America’s social problems to fester further.
If you are vocal about not liking what’s being done currently, you must propose an alternative. Otherwise you are just ranting and making problems worse.
Is there a point to capitalizing black, but not white? If not, no problem; if so, the point escapes me.
My mother also protested for civil rights in the 1960s, earning an overnight stay in the Jackson, MS jail. Thanks to her, and you, the country is immeasurably better. I personally feel the programs you now support have done and will continue to do a disservice to that progress.
Yes 100%. We are all more than our skin color, and we all can be better. However, 400 years of white advantaged system does not equate to 10 years of restoration or a couple of decades of Affirmative Action. Enslavement built this country and that debt has never been paid back, and only grossly increased. If 40 acres and a mule had been paid then there’d be no need for Affirmative Action or any other system correction. Legislation following Restoration only re-created the previous system and doubled down in some cases, such as in Redlining. Other groups of people have received reparations, why not African Americans?