One year into Donald Trump’s new term, the most consequential changes to American education are not coming from test scores, technology, or teacher shortages. They are coming from an intensifying effort to redefine what children are allowed to learn — and who gets to decide. Just as consequential, but less publicly debated, is the administration’s renewed push to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education itself, a move that threatens the very infrastructure protecting students’ civil rights, particularly those with disabilities.
Redefining History
Under the banner of “patriotic education,” the administration and its allies have elevated a Christian-centered, conservative vision of U.S. history and civics that is rapidly reshaping K–12 classrooms. Framed as a corrective to what supporters describe as “anti-American” or “woke” curricula, this movement emphasizes national pride, Judeo-Christian values, and a celebratory narrative of the nation’s founding. In practice, it has narrowed the boundaries of acceptable teaching and placed unprecedented pressure on public schools to align with ideological demands—while simultaneously weakening the federal oversight that has long ensured equal access to education.
At the heart of this shift is a renewed insistence that history be taught primarily as a story of American exceptionalism. Federal guidance and affiliated organizations encourage schools to highlight the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and founding principles such as liberty, limited government, and individual responsibility—while cautioning educators not to allow the nation’s failures to “overshadow” its achievements. The approach seeks to inspire civic pride and participation, especially as the country approaches its 250th anniversary.
READ: What Trump’s First Year Revealed About Power, Accountability and Our Responsibility
Supporters argue that students have been burdened with a distorted narrative — one that dwells too heavily on racism, oppression, and injustice at the expense of progress and prosperity. In their view, an honest education should explain why the United States remains, as they often put it, “the greatest experiment in liberty.” But this framing presents a false choice: pride or critique, patriotism or truth. History taught responsibly does not require guilt, nor does it require silence.
Literacy and Learning Differences
Equally revealing, and painfully overlooked, is how these ideological shifts compound the struggles of students with learning differences. As The New Yorker recently documented, “proven methods for teaching the readers who struggle most have been known for decades. Why do we often fail to use them?” — a question that cuts to the heart of how the nation values children’s education and well-being. The article recounts how structured, science-based literacy instruction changed a struggling reader’s life, and notes that “what works for our students actually works for everyone. It’s a matter of dosage.”
This isn’t an abstract academic dispute. For children who can’t read, every school day “holds the potential for repeated humiliation,” and the psychological harm is real: “If you are a kid who is struggling to read, you are experiencing failure really fast, and you are experiencing massive confusion, and it is actually fucking frightening.”
The Normalization of Censorship
Overlaying these instructional failures is a nationwide campaign to restrict what children can read. According to PEN America’s The Normalization of Book Banning report, book censorship in the United States today is “rampant and common” and “never before” have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries. There are more than 22,800 documented instances of book bans across 45 states since 2021. Censorship “has become a new normal” in public education. These bans are not minor or isolated—they reflect a coordinated effort to control narratives and erase diverse voices from classrooms and libraries.
PEN America warns that book banning doesn’t merely restrict access to literature; it erases stories, identities, and histories, reshaping understandings of the world for young readers. As the report explains, “when children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read… they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.”
Under the guise of “protecting children” and “parental rights,” these bans disproportionately target works featuring LGBTQ+ themes and characters of color, alongside books about race, activism, and gender identity. What’s more, the vast majority of these removals — 97% — are not the result of clear legal mandates but instead, preemptive compliance with vaguely worded state laws or political pressure from local boards and officials, illustrating how fear and ideology drive censorship far more than transparent democratic processes. Sound familiar Central Bucks?
Rights at Risk
What is often left out of this conversation is how these ideological shifts intersect with the administration’s call to dismantle the Department of Education. As the Urban Institute has warned, closing or hollowing out the department would have sweeping consequences for students with disabilities, who rely on federal enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. These laws are not symbolic, they guarantee services, accommodations, and legal recourse for millions of children. Without a centralized federal agency to monitor compliance, investigate complaints, and withhold funding when states violate the law, protections for disabled students would become uneven, fragile, and deeply dependent on local politics.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights also plays a critical role in enforcing protections against discrimination based on disability, race, sex, and language status. Weakening or eliminating this office would not empower families — it would leave them with fewer avenues for redress when schools fail their children. For families already navigating complex special-education systems, the loss of federal oversight would shift the burden entirely onto parents to challenge well-resourced districts in court, effectively turning civil rights into privileges reserved for those who can afford to fight for them.
The Parental Rights Paradox
The administration’s emphasis on classical civics has also fueled the adoption of alternative instructional materials aligned with conservative and Christian interpretations of American identity. Videos, lesson plans, and curricula produced by groups such as PragerU have gained legitimacy in public-school settings, despite being developed outside the norms of peer-reviewed scholarship. These materials prioritize faith, virtue, and national pride, often presenting complex historical events in simplified moral terms. At the same time, the erosion of federal standards raises questions about who ensures educational quality and equity when ideology replaces expertise.
Perhaps the most disruptive consequence of this agenda has been the elevation of “parental rights” as a mechanism for curriculum control. Advocacy groups like Moms for Liberty — now wielding significant influence at the local and state levels — have pushed for heightened oversight of textbooks, classroom discussions, and library collections. In many districts, this has translated into book bans, curriculum revisions, and a chilling effect on educators who fear backlash for addressing topics such as systemic racism, gender identity, or social inequality. For students with disabilities, whose educational plans often depend on individualized supports and inclusive materials, these conflicts can mean fewer resources and diminished attention to their needs. The idea of “parental rights” is really advocating for the rights of only some parents while trampling on the rights of others.
Supporters frame these efforts as protection: shielding children from ideological indoctrination and restoring local authority over education. Critics, however, warn that such interventions undermine professional expertise and replace educational standards with political litmus tests. When individual objections dictate collective learning—and when federal safeguards are stripped away — classrooms and libraries alike become battlegrounds rather than spaces for inquiry.
That said, during the most recent elections the only seats Moms for Liberties candidates won were the races where they ran unopposed.
A Fragmented Future
What makes Trump’s first year especially consequential is not simply the content being promoted, but the authority being withdrawn. As federal oversight recedes, disparities widen. Students’ access to a full, honest education and to basic civil rights protections increasingly depends on where they live and whose values dominate their school board. The dismantling of the Department of Education does not return power to “the people” so much as it fragments responsibility and erodes accountability.
Public education has always reflected the tensions of democracy. But it has also rested on a shared commitment to intellectual honesty and equal access — to teaching history in all its complexity, contradiction, and consequence, and to protecting students who are most vulnerable. We should champion a system that embraces both scientific rigor in literacy instruction and a comprehensive, truthful study of our democratic experiment. A democracy does not grow stronger by shielding students from uncomfortable truths, nor by dismantling the institutions designed to defend their rights.
The question facing American education after this first year is not whether students should love their country. It is whether we trust them enough to learn it fully — and whether we are willing to protect every child’s right to do so.
