How Betsy DeVos Could End the School-Integration Comeback

Under President Trump, the federal role in education is set to be drastically curtailed. Last Thursday, Trump proposed slashing federal spending on schools by $9 billion. His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has vowed to shrink her agency and return power to local officials, which could mean scaling back civil-rights enforcement. All of these signals may also foreshadow a retreat on school integration.

Integration made a brief return to the national stage last year when President Barack Obama, who had mostly avoided the issue before then, a $120 million grant program in his final budget that would fund local socioeconomic school-integration plans. After that proposal died in Congress, Obama’s education secretary, John King, a much smaller version last December. He the benefits of diversity. “He talked about school diversity in a way that federal officials had not in years and years and years,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a think tank that promotes socioeconomic school integration.