AAUW: Gutting the Department of Education Betrays Students’ Civil Rights

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Association of University Women (AAUW) is deeply alarmed by the Trump administration’s escalating efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. These efforts include mass staff cuts and the recent announcement of six “partnerships” that shift the day-to-day work of major K–12 and higher education programs to other federal agencies. 

These moves raise serious questions about how the Department can carry out the statutory responsibilities Congress assigned it in 1979. These were enforcing civil-rights laws in education, administering federal aid fairly and effectively, and ensuring equal educational opportunity for all students. 

Statement of Gloria L. Blackwell, Chief Executive Officer, American Association of University Women (AAUW): 

Let’s be clear about what is at stake. The Department of Education was created to center students’ rights and educational equity, not to outsource its core expertise across agencies whose primary missions are labor, health, interior affairs, or foreign policy. You cannot meet that mandate when the people and programs with the most expertise in K–12 equity, higher education access, Native education, international education, and childcare for student parents are scattered across agencies whose missions are labor, health, public lands, and foreign policy. When you hollow out the Department and scatter its knowledge of K-12 and higher education, you make it harder for students to challenge discrimination and harder for Congress or the public to hold parties accountable. 

AAUW urges Congress to intervene and ensure that the Department of Education can do what the law requires it to do — protect students’ civil rights and advance gender and racial equity in every classroom and on every campus.

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AAUW (American Association of University Women) is the nation’s leading organization for equity in higher education and women’s economic empowerment. Founded in 1881 by women who defied society’s conventions by earning college degrees, AAUW has since worked to increase women’s access, opportunity, and equity in higher education through research, advocacy, and philanthropy of over $146 million, supporting thousands of women scholars. Learn more at aauw.org.