The Trump administration threatened on Tuesday to withhold federal funds from Chicago Public Schools over a program designed to help Black students do better academically, furthering the White House’s assault on liberal policies in education.
The investigation, overseen by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, is based on a complaint from Parents Defending Education, a conservative, Virginia-based group that claims that the Chicago program, the Black Student Success Plan, amounted to racial discrimination. According to the complaint, the school district was “failing students of all races and ethnicities, which makes this racially segregated program all the more egregious.”
A spokeswoman for the school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.