The Trump administration threatened on Tuesday to withhold federal funds from Chicago Public Schools over a program designed to help Black students do better academically, furthering the White House’s assault on liberal policies in education.
The investigation, overseen by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, is based on a complaint from Parents Defending Education, a conservative, Virginia-based group that claims that the Chicago program, the Black Student Success Plan, amounted to racial discrimination. According to the complaint, the school district was “failing students of all races and ethnicities, which makes this racially segregated program all the more egregious.”
A spokeswoman for the school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A news release from the district said the plan is part of the system’s “commitment to eliminating educational opportunity gaps and ensuring Black students have the support needed to achieve academic success and personal growth.” It involves “implementing culturally-responsive practices and instruction, ensuring equitable resource allocation, increasing the recruitment and retention of Black educators and leaders, and fostering meaningful engagement with Black students and families.”
The Trump administration has slashed the number of civil rights investigators at the Education Department, but has also increased the number of inquiries into programs that administration officials think unfairly favor students based on race or grant special consideration to transgender students.
One investigation took aim at Denver’s public school system over a gender-neutral bathroom at a school. An inquiry into the school district in Ithaca, N.Y., has focused on an annual “Students of Color United Summit,” which a conservative group known as the Equal Protection Project complained had discriminated against white students.
The Education Department has also opened investigations into entire public school systems in California and Maine. The California inquiry concerns a state law protecting transgender students from disclosures to their parents. The Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funding from Maine because the state ignored President Trump’s executive order barring transgender athletes who were assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ sports.
Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections.
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