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Already strapped public schools are scrambling in response to a letter sent by the Department of Education on February 14. The letter threatened loss of federal funding if K-12 schools and colleges don’t stop “race-based decision-making” within fourteen days. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has been threatening to disband the Department of Education. To talk about how to teach history and truth at a time like this, host Douglas Haynes is joined by Jesse Hagopian and Kimber Wilkerson. 

They discuss the Trump Administration’s intimidation of educators, book bans, the #TeachTruth movement, and the federal government’s role in providing special education services. Hagopian says that the “Dear Colleague” letter represents a coordinated attack on public education that silences Black history and weaponizes Title IX against transgender students. He adds that people who advocate book bans and attack Black education promote what Hagopian calls “uncritical race theory.”

Wilkerson says that over the last few decades, the number of students who access special education services in the US has grown, and we’re seeing higher than ever graduation rates. This shows that special education advocacy work has been successful. And there was a success last week when the lawsuit against Section 504–which bans discrimination on the basis of disability–was paused. However a program that supported special education teachers in Milwaukee Public Schools was terminated last week.

Jesse Hagopian has been an educator for over twenty years and taught for over a decade Seattle’s Garfield High School–the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test. Jesse is an editor for the social justice periodical Rethinking Schools, is the co-editor of the books, Black Lives Matter at School, Teaching for Black Lives, Teacher Unions and Social Justice, and is the editor of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. Jesse serves as the Director of the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award and is an organizer with the Black Lives Matter at School movement.

Kimber Wilkerson is a professor of Special Education in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Wilkerson has expertise in the preparation of teachers to provide instruction to students with disabilities to improve their long-term outcomes. She also conducts research on supports for early career special educators, to help them stay in the field. She is currently co-director of a special education teacher residency program in collaboration with Milwaukee Public Schools.

Featured image of the Seal of the US Department of Education via Wikimedia Commons.

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