The Battle for Public Education: Why Standing Up for Equity is a Fight for Democracy
Attacks on equity in education threaten the very foundation of democracy in the United States. In 2024, before the elections and as part of an ongoing evaluation project, EduDream engaged a group of diverse education leaders to explore their perspectives on the current state—and future direction of—the US public education system. These perspectives are timely and reveal several potential pathways for preserving education as a fundamental institution of democracy while countering false narratives about the role of equity in education.
In line with Project 2025 and Agenda 47, numerous and continual executive orders now seek to upend public education and ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The orders directly impact people’s day-to-day lives, at times producing unsettling shock and uncertainty about potentially losing a government job, being deported from the country, or being prohibited from participation based on gender identification. Amidst the chaos, the concept of equity has come under particular scrutiny, with the term itself increasingly under attack for varied reasons, raising confusion over what exactly equity means.
And yet, despite these recent attacks, equity is inseparable from democratic ideals of liberty, justice, and equality. These ideals, central to our nation, uphold that all individuals deserve the same opportunity to participate in society meaningfully. Within a multicultural society like the US, such principles require further nuance, which equity frameworks provide. Equity frameworks acknowledge that people’s ability to engage in society varies due to intersecting factors such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Such intersections create unique experiences of oppression and privilege. In a simplified form, oppression and privilege indicate one’s ability to engage meaningfully with society and access resources, opportunities, and representation.
When we fail to acknowledge the complexity of social dynamics and disregard equity, we undermine the aforementioned democratic ideals. Even more critically, we erode our foundation for meaningful dialogue across lines of identity—a practice essential to democratic processes. A shared understanding of reality is necessary for meaningful discourse. If Individuals can not voice their values—what makes them different, and what makes them similar, within a shared understanding of the world and how it works—they cannot engage in consensus-building.
Given this context, stakeholder perspectives on the state of US public education emphasized that passivity toward equity carries significant risks, making actionable pathways forward an immediate priority. The following recommendations emerged as particularly salient.
Examples of Executive Orders
- Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling aims to address growing societal anxieties about race and gender consciousness and their perceived impact on students’ self-confidence and identities. The order calls to eliminate depictions of ”anti-American ideologies,” such as concepts of oppression, race, and gender.
- Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families, further detailed in a fact sheet, states that parents should direct their children’s education. To this end, it encourages states to redirect public school funds towards alternatives—such as religious and non-religious private institutions, charter schools, micro-schools, and homeschooling.
Rec 1. Expand Efforts To Integrate Civics Into Education
Public education must renew its focus on creating a sense of connection between students and the world in which they live. In light of significant ideological divides in the US and youth who feel increasingly disconnected from society, public education remains one of the last places where students interact across lines of identity: racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic. To leverage this space further, enhance students’ abilities to engage in discourse, and create consensus, public education must focus on creating democratic opportunities; fostering connections between schools and their locales, encouraging diverse social engagement, bolstering collaboration, and embedding civics education into the classroom.
Ultimately, expanding efforts to integrate civics into education is about enhancing students’ ability to voice their opinions across ideological divides, providing them with shared frameworks and foundations to understand reality and engage meaningfully in their communities and the broader world. This need to reintegrate civics into US public education has similarly been voiced by students who have felt the discouraging impact of declining civic education on their generation.
Rec 2. Create A Unified Vision And Direction For The Future Of Public Education
Those opposing public education and equity have a clear vision for their efforts, while pro-public education efforts in the US currently lack a cohesive vision. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a “North Star” or fixed direction for public education. Current efforts to improve the system are disjointed without guidance. Creating this vision is not a simple task, as it needs to balance bipartisan ideas, drive education forward, and overcome barriers disparate efforts encounter. As such, creating a vision for the future of education must bring a range of funders, experts, and other stakeholders to the drafting table—working, as we do in a democracy, to create consensus. A clear and unified vision, emerging through this collaborative process and supported by an applicable theory of change, can drive meaningful change. Without such a vision, efforts to improve public education equitably will remain fractured and unable to effectively counter the prevailing movement to undermine it.
Rec 3. Look To Where Government Funding Is Waning To Bolster Approval
When government support wanes for important facets of democracy, such as equity, other systems of support need to turn their attention to these causes. Philanthropy and the private sector have the opportunity to demonstrate pro-democratic allyship, pinpointing areas of critical importance—for example, the aforementioned civics education expansion and the development of a unified vision for education—investing critical monetary support and other resources. While it is impossible to ask philanthropic and private entities to fully meet governmental investment gaps, in education they can align their efforts with the work already being done by educators, non-profits, advocacy groups, and others across locales. By doing so, they can bolster preexisting efforts and impact while further empowering communities to drive change from the ground up.
As acknowledged by Timothy Snyder, a Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, breakdowns in fact-based dialogue are often linked to the historical collapse of democratic societies into authoritarian rule. Without a shared factual foundation for discussion, there is no common ground, and democracy becomes a fruitless endeavor. Attacks on equity, particularly those that try to erode our understanding of history and social systems, enable this dissent. This is particularly salient to attacks on equity within the education system, which is deeply embedded in larger economic, political, and social structures, and directly influences future generations.
While these anti-equity executive orders still face legal challenges and their future remains uncertain, these actions sew fear throughout the education community and beyond. To overcome this fear, it is essential to work towards meaningful action that uplifts democratic ideals and preserves institutions such as public education. We still live in a democracy, and we all must work together to protect it.
