Laura Baker/Education Week via Canva
On National Girls and Women in Sports Day, Trump signs an executive order threatening to withhold federal funds from schools that allow transgender students to compete on women’s teams. Under the order, the secretary of education is told to prioritize civil rights cases against schools and athletic associations that don’t comply.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency abruptly revokes hundreds of millions of dollars in Department of Education contracts that fund key data collection and research efforts largely overseen by the agency’s Institute of Education Sciences. The contract terminations are the first of a series that results in the cancellation of contracts and grants that support teacher-preparation programs and technical assistance provided to schools and state education departments through the regional education laboratory, comprehensive center, and equity assistance center programs.
Linda McMahon appears before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee as Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of education. She fields questions about Trump’s executive orders, DOGE’s cuts, and the president’s desire to eliminate the department she’s been nominated to run.
The Department of Education’s office for civil rights sends a Dear Colleague letter telling K-12 schools and universities they have two weeks to stop DEI programs and practices or risk losing federal funding. The letter leads to confusion, as the department doesn’t define DEI and appears to tell schools and colleges to eliminate any race-based programming.
At a White House event with governors, Trump calls out Maine’s Democratic governor and threatens to withhold federal funding from the state over policies allowing transgender girls to compete on girls’ athletic teams.
When Trump asks her if she’ll comply with his Feb. 5 executive order barring transgender girls from girls’ sports, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who is in the room, responds by saying the state is following state and federal laws. “We’ll see you in court,” she says.
The Education and Health and Human Services departments launch investigations into the state the same day and swiftly find Maine in violation of Title IX, asserting that Title IX excludes transgender athletes—a reading of the law that legal experts dispute.
The Maine situation becomes a test case for the Trump administration’s treatment of states that defy his administration’s orders. The state has two transgender athletes, according to the Maine Principals’ Association, which oversees high school athletic competitions in the state.
National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner Peggy Carr, who oversees the administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is put on administrative leave as the Trump administration continues to downsize the Education Department. At least 120 Department of Education employees have been terminated or placed on administrative leave by this point.
The Department of Education launches a public portal—EndDEI.Ed.Gov—for parents, students, teachers, and others to report DEI practices in K-12 schools.
2025-04-29 04:01:00
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