Every Tuesday, nearly like clockwork, the U.S. Department of Education would update a public list of schools and colleges under investigation for potential civil rights violations against students. Every Tuesday, that is, until January. January 14, 2025—six days prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration for his second term. Today, that online list remains unchanged from the week before the inauguration, frozen in time. My colleagues Jodi Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards, both veteran education reporters, relied on that list frequently in their reporting. “You’d receive a call or tip regarding a school district, then check if it was under investigation,” Cohen recently told me. Smith Richards noted that the data helped the public identify patterns in the types of investigations launched and their locations. For decades, the Office for Civil Rights has sought to protect students’ constitutional rights from discrimination due to disability, race, national origin, or gender. Without a public method to monitor the office’s investigations, journalists, education watchdogs, and parents might remain uninformed. Early last year, Cohen and Smith Richards contacted sources within the Department of Education. They discovered that the department had substantially reduced its investigations into certain forms of discrimination in schools. They ran a story on how the department, during the Trump administration, is now prioritizing probes into curbing antisemitism, halting transgender athletes’ involvement in women’s sports, and addressing purported discrimination against white students. Complaints regarding transgender students participating in sports and using girls’ bathrooms at school were expedited, while cases of racial harassment against Black students from last year were disregarded. Throughout last year, the reporters repeatedly requested updates on investigations from the new Department of Education leadership.
