Bombshell Report Claims That Biden’s Education Department Spent $1 Billion on DEI

Madeline Leesman | December 14, 2024 3:30 PM

A study conducted by parental rights organization Parents Defending Education (PDE) found that President Joe Biden’s Department of Education spent at least $1 billion on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives since 2021.

Researchers found that $490 million was spent on DEI hiring efforts, $343 million on DEI programming and $170 million on DEI-related mental health resources.

Key takeaways from the study include the fact that multiple Education Department grants “feature programming that advances race-based teacher recruiting, hiring, and training, including the use of race-based affinity groups.”

In addition, many grants were issued for youth activism programming used in far-left ethnic studies courses (via PDE):

–– A $4,000,000 grant was given for a 3-week residential “culturally responsive” computer science summer camp for 600 11th and 12th graders.
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–– The University of Iowa received a grant award of $1,261,718 to train 40 elementary teachers to “enact equity-centered education” in partner K-12 districts.
–– The University of Missouri – St. Louis was awarded a $306,209 grant to train school counselors in Trauma-Informed, Antiracist Social-Emotional Learning (TIAR-SEL).
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From 2021 to the present, the Department of Education (ED) awarded to universities, school districts, and nonprofits 162 grants totaling $1,002,522,304.81. This report only captures grants that specifically included diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), restorative practices, and/or youth activism as part of the programming.

"You reap what you sow, and it is very clear that this Administration’s Department of Education has been incentivizing the advancement of far-left ideologies into American schools in place of rigorous, proven methods of instruction,” PDE Researcher and author of the GrantEd report, Rhyen Staley, said in a statement.

“The only people or groups to benefit from the enormous amount of grant funding are the universities, administrators, and DEI consultants, at the expense of children’s education. This needs to change by placing children’s learning at the forefront of education, instead of prioritizing race-based policies and DEI,” Staley added.