Biden’s Education Department Spent Over $100,000,000 On DEI, Antiracist Social Workers For K-12 Schools

The Department of Education under the Biden administration spent over $100 million on grants to universities meant to train K-12 social workers in critical race theory, social justice and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), a report released Wednesday found.

The grants were issued under the guise of providing mental health to students through the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program, according to a report released Wednesday by Parents Defending Education (PDE). The funds were distributed to 26 universities that institute required courses teaching about oppression and white supremacy, radicalizing social workers who go on to work in K-12 schools.

“School social workers did not use to spend years marinating in highly ideological courses about privilege, oppression, racial capitalism, and white supremacy, but today, this is common practice in public and private universities,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for PDE, said in a release on the report. “While this is obviously disturbing, the fact that the U.S. Department of Education has been funding it since 2021 is a major red flag. How can a social worker help students become the best version of themselves if they see them as oppressors with unearned privilege?”

The Master of Social Work program at Georgia State University, which received an $8,000,000 grant in 2023 geared specifically towards children’s mental health, requires a class on “Diversity and Social Justice,” according to the university’s website. The class “focuses on understanding and applying multicultural concepts to practice, developing awareness of one’s cultural identity, and exploring how diversity and justice issues impact generalist practice in the context of field education.”

A $1,200,000 grant awarded to the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2023 goes towards programs that require an explicitly titled DEI course that “Uses intersectionality as a framework for exploring multiple dimensions of difference and their relationship to oppression, privilege, and cultural humility,” according to the program’s requirements.

The school’s graduate program in social work requires a course titled “Engaging Diversity through Justice and Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice” which aims to discuss “the intersecting dimensions of human diversity as they relate to identity formation, human rights, and social, economic, environmental and racial justice through understanding oppression, privilege, and power across micro, mezzo and macro levels of social work practice,” PDE found.

Another recipient of the grants, Indiana University, received $5,700,000 over a five-year period starting in 2023 to teach anti-oppression, heterosexism and white privilege in social work, according to documents obtained by PDE. 

“These significant milestones illustrate our ongoing commitment to prioritizing mental health and well-being across the communities we serve,” Pamela Whitten, the university’s president, wrote in the announcement of the grant.

Georgia State, the University of Alaska, Indiana University and the Department of Education did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Much of the profession has become significantly defined by DEI topics and activism with the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the largest organization in the profession, explicitly stating its mission to be advancing “social justice” as one of its core values.

The Department of Education under the Trump administration has been working to eliminate divisive and discriminatory topics from schools, working to axe hundreds of millions of dollars in teacher training grants that went towards advancing similar topics. A Biden-appointed judge has since ordered the reinstatement of the grants.

The department has also been on a mission to eliminate internal DEI directives and staff.