Musk to cut hundreds of Dept. of Ed. contracts, saving $1 billion
Leader of Department of Government Efficiency cuts DEI-focused contracts
American taxpayers may soon be off the hook soon for 29 DEI grants and other Department of Education spending.
Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency, and its team of Gen Z software engineers identified hundreds of Education Department grants focused on DEI and other spending it deemed wasteful.
The contracts, numbering over 100, work out to around $1 billion in savings.
“One sought to train teachers to ‘help students understand / interrogate the complex histories involved in oppression, and help students recognize areas of privilege and power on an individual and collective basis,’” the DOGE X account announced last night.
The Dept. of Ed., which Trump may soon try to dissolve anyways, also “terminated 89 contracts worth $881mm,” according to an announcement from Musk’s team.
The cuts also appear to shut down the Institute of Education Sciences, a research arm within the department.
The think tank funded a study on how to encourage “empowerment” for homosexual and transgender high schoolers, as previously reported by The College Fix.
Conservatives praised the initiative in comments on X.
“DEI was never about ‘equity’—it was about enforcing ideological conformity and institutionalizing discrimination,” Parents Defending Education President Nicole Neily wrote. “Shutting down these wasteful, divisive programs is a win for every student. More states need to follow suit.”
“Not a bad start,” Adam Kissel, former deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Education, wrote in response.
“The kids can’t read,” conservative activist Erika Donalds, the wife of Congressman Byron Donalds, wrote on X.
The cuts come ahead of a planned confirmation hearing Thursday for Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the DOE.
The department has poured at least $1 billion into DEI initiatives at K-12 schools since 2021, according to a report from Parents Defending Education.
The Fix previously reported:
For example, the University of Iowa received a $1.2 million grant to train elementary school teachers to “enact equity-centered education” in their school districts, according to the report.
Another $4 million grant to the University of California San Diego funded a program called The LISTEN with the aim of increasing high school participation among “low-income, racial minoritized groups.”
A curriculum linked to the program has students examine the “origins, perpetuation, impact, intersectionality, and levels … of systemic and structural oppression (racism/white supremacy, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and xenophobia …” the report found.
“Equity appears to be the most important priority for this Department of Education,” Caroline Moore, vice president of PDE, previously told The Fix.
MORE: New research identifies more than 1,100 DEI-related jobs at University of Michigan
IMAGE: DOGE/X
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