On April 23, 2025, President Donald Trump issued executive orders promoting artificial intelligence initiatives in K-12 schools and calling for changes to federal school discipline guidance.
The Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth executive order establishes a White House AI education task force to coordinate federal efforts on the matter. The multi-agency task force will include the secretaries of education, agriculture, labor and energy, along with the director of the National Science Foundation and other federal agency representatives. The aim of the task force will be to encourage AI literacy and proficiency by integrating AI into K-12 education, offering comprehensive AI training for teachers, and developing early exposure to AI concepts to create an “AI-ready workforce and the next generation of American AI innovators.” The order has definitive timelines for both the task force and the USDE.
The other executive order, Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies, calls for USDE Secretary McMahon to issue guidance within 30 days on states’ and school districts’ “obligations not to engage in racial discrimination under Title VI in all contexts, including school discipline.” Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in federally funded programs. The new order states that previous federal guidance on school discipline was based on “discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology.” with a particular focus curtailing measures on disciplinary rates that were racially disproportionate and cause for concern in the past. Therer must also be a report generated that assesses the status of “discriminatory-equity-ideology-based school discipline and behavior modification techniques” in public schools.
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