As a 20-year teacher in California public schools, I’ve seen my share of education fads get renamed or disowned when their rosy promises fail to deliver. Most do little more than act as a tax on class time and resources, but they can at least claim the goal of improving education outcomes.
The latest trend—diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—is no less a tax on the classroom, yet its aim isn’t to raise test scores. Instead, it seeks to infiltrate every aspect of the education system to provide full employment for a new layer of bureaucracy at teachers’ and students’ expense.
That’s why I’m glad the Trump administration is attempting to dismantle it. But last week, three federal judges separately brought Trump’s enforcement tactic—conditioning federal school funding on an end to DEI in school districts—to a screeching halt, at least for now.
Though Trump’s efforts are stuck in legal limbo, I believe we can still see an end to DEI—if teachers join the fight.
I know Trump isn’t always popular in the staff lounge. Yet teachers and Trump have one thing in common: we both win, if DEI loses. The changes I’ve witnessed in my profession show why, for teachers, ending DEI is an existential crisis.
In my suburban Sacramento school district, every meeting and district-led training has become a sermon, re-educating teachers about our place on the scale of oppression. Consequently, priorities like improving classroom management and adapting for special needs or English learner students have taken a back seat to political indoctrination.
Math teachers must now explain a new type of inequality—a racial math that has become a zero-sum game. Science teachers must turn their microscopes on themselves to deconstruct their own “implicit bias.” History teachers must throw out the old “melting pot” and embrace a racial bento box, where each ethnicity has a segregated “affinity space.”
Every educator, regardless of subject matter, must either sacrifice class time to proselytize for the cause, or become complicit in the problem. And lessons only go skin deep because students, DEI proponents claim, only truly learn from teachers and authors who look like them.
While previous education fads had some semblance of accountability—test scores—DEI sits above reproach. Criticize DEI and you’re not just uncool, you are anti-anti-racist (read: racist).
Enough. Teachers are consistently ranked among the nation’s most trusted professionals. It’s time to validate that trust by standing up to school administrators, teachers’ union officials, and others who put DEI above the classroom.
What can teachers do? Three things: investigate, litigate, and campaign.
When my district mandated 28 hours of DEI training for teachers, I explored the curriculum. It claimed that white people are innately racist and must “educate fellow white people” about their sins. The training company’s CEO even called the American flag a hate symbol. Publicizing facts like these helps put parents back in the loop, letting them see how their children’s teachers are taught.
I also requested records on DEI-related expenses, uncovering that local taxpayers are funding an entire Educational Equity Office that diverts $6 million from the classroom. The nearly 100 equity coaches that my district employs balloons that amount to over $7.7 million per year.
My colleagues now know that money which could have provided a nearly $3,000 raise to each teacher is instead being consumed by a voracious DEI bureaucracy that is making their workplace miserable.
Shocked at my district’s mismanagement, I sought help from my teachers’ union—and discovered that it was arm-in-arm with school officials. My union even barred white teachers from running for a certain leadership position. I sued the union for discrimination with the help of the Fairness Center—and won.
I also ran for leadership positions within my union, using the opportunity to spread the word among my fellow educators and, hopefully, inspire them to stand up to threats to their ability to teach.
I know there are hundreds of thousands of teachers across California and America who share my views on the harms DEI is inflicting. Trump’s top-down campaign against DEI can only do so much. It’s time for teachers to challenge the DEI bureaucracy from the bottom-up and regain control of our own profession.
Isaac Newman teaches history in Elk Grove Unified School District in suburban Sacramento, California.
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