The Supreme Court decided last Friday that the Trump administration was within its authority to freeze $65 million in funding to teacher training programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
It’s welcome news to those of us who want to see American education improve and American teachers succeed. Teacher training programs, after all, are where teachers are made—just as a good program can help create excellent teachers, and set them up for potentially decades of success in the classroom, a bad program can hinder teachers from teaching effectively and staying in the profession. Moreover, ideology like DEI is, ironically, un-inclusive: many people who might otherwise make excellent teachers but disagree with the partisan bent in teacher training programs will choose to avoid the profession altogether.
By cutting DEI grants, the Trump administration is setting up current and future teachers—and, by proxy, their students—for success: not only does this move disincentivize ideology in classrooms, but it expands the pool of teachers, finally including people who want to teach without the trappings of DEI or other insanity that has all too often invaded schools. The decision also shows that the Trump administration clearly understands the importance of teacher training programs and the massive power they wield over the future of American education. They should continue to make this a priority.
As it stands, a small number of academics, mostly siphoned off in ivory-tower schools of education, have disproportionate influence over generations of public school teachers thanks to their role in teacher training, education, and certification programs. States set all requirements for teacher licensure and certification, including ongoing teacher education. When those programs—usually administered by universities—begin to promulgate bad ideas, both political (such as gender ideology or critical race theory) and pedagogical, those ideas spread in classrooms everywhere.
Consider one of the biggest education stories of the past 20 years. Lucy Calkins, an academic at Columbia University Teachers College, threw out tried-and-true phonics and promoted an ineffective-but-trendy method of reading instruction in its place in the 2000s. While an ordinary teacher who rejected phonics would have been laughed at, Calkins was able to get away with it because of her place in a prominent, Ivy League institution. Worse yet, her bad pedagogy trickled down, first to college classrooms across the country, then, after teachers were instructed in her methods, to K-12 classrooms across the country where students were routinely left illiterate. Only now is the damage her methods caused being corrected, as schools return to evidence-based phonics. Still, today’s corrections don’t change the fact that countless children fell through the cracks and are unable to read proficiently because they missed the window in childhood when such learning is most possible.
Especially at a time when parents around the country are concerned about ideology in schools, as well as the general deterioration of academic standards, it is important to note that bad ideas and pedagogy proliferate in large part due to a centralized system in which a small number of academics in schools of education can influence the next generation of public school teachers throughout the country. The Trump administration’s cuts get at some of the most egregious federal abuses, but ultimately, as education is primarily a state-level issue in this country, more work will have to be done on the state level to ensure teacher training programs are pedagogically sound and nonpartisan. States can copy what the Trump administration did—that is, they can review state grants and nix the ones that entrench DEI and other bad ideologies or practices.
They can also look to what Florida has done for an even more direct path forward: in 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law House Bill 1291: Educator Preparation Programs, mandating that teacher training programs may not “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum or instruction that teaches identity politics…or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.” Teacher training programs must additionally “afford candidates the opportunity to think critically, achieve mastery of academic program content, learn instructional strategies, and demonstrate competence.”
States must remember that they have the authority to certify which schools of education are allowed to license teachers. Instead of letting bad programs sow political discord and tank academic standards, states should use their authority to regulate education programs and ensure that teachers are being trained in accordance with American values, including political neutrality and academic excellence. Not only does this attract good people to the teaching profession, but it also makes for better classrooms and better future citizens.