December 1, 2017

DeVos attacks student protections

Good Education - Since becoming the Trump administrations’ Education secretary, Betsy DeVos has been dead-set on repealing Obama-era protections for America’s most vulnerable students.

Shortly after taking office, she revoked guidelines that protect transgender students’ bathroom access. Then, in September, her office announced that it was reviewing federal guidelines for handling sexual assault on college campuses, with aims to improve protections for the accused.

Documents leaked to the Associated Press show that DeVos’ department is now taking aim at repealing guidelines from the previous administration that protect students and parents who make civil rights violation claims. Currently, investigations are required to examine whether incidents are part of a broader, systemic problem — but according to the leaked documents, the department will begin limiting the scope of civil rights investigations, treating them as individual complaints. Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr.

By limiting the scope of investigations, schools may overlook the systemic issues that lead to alleged violations. When these patterns are left unaddressed, they may fester, proliferating discrimination; yet the proposed policy revisions handed out to civil rights officials at the department last week completely eliminated the word “systematic” from the new guidelines.

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