Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is poised to roll back protections for teachers and school administrators, an education official said on Thursday, in a move that could impact thousands of educators in the country.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is set to rollback protections for educators and school leaders.
This is the latest in a series of moves by the Trump Administration to weaken the nation’s public education system.
DeVos announced in a tweet that she would withdraw a rule that protects educators from retaliation for reporting sexual harassment.
She did not elaborate.
The Trump Administration has been aggressively targeting the federal public school workforce.
The rule was part of a broader effort by the Education Department to rollbacks protections for public employees.
It requires that public employees at every level be afforded the same protections under the law as private sector workers.
The Department of Education has been working for months to make it harder for teachers to get the protections they need, a source familiar with the issue told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Devos and other Cabinet officials have been urging educators to sign a pledge of non-discrimination that says, “I will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, genetic information, or marital status.”
The administration is seeking to roll that pledge back to include language that explicitly forbids discrimination based on sex, race, religion and national origin.
The administration has also begun targeting educators who teach in districts that do not comply with the Trump agenda, a policy that would effectively reverse the rule.
The Trump administration has been targeting public school educators in schools and districts across the country as it attempts to undo years of education reforms.
DeVos has pledged to “repeal and replace” the Education Act, which was passed by Congress in 2010 to strengthen public schools and create a more diverse workforce.
