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Boston Globe

Some education grants were used for ‘leftwing agenda,' Trump administration says

Advertisement 'Many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,' the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up It said New York schools had used money for English language instruction to promote organizations that advocate for immigrants in the country illegally. Washington state used the money to direct immigrants without legal status toward scholarships the Trump administration says were 'intended for American students.' Grant funds also were used for a seminar on 'queer resistance in the arts,' the office said. Officials from New York and Washington state didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Advocates for low-income and immigrant children connected the grant freeze to the Trump administration's larger crackdown on immigrants. Two of the five federal programs put on hold were appropriated by Congress to help support English proficiency of students still learning the language and migrant children who move with their parents to follow agricultural and other jobs. Advertisement School districts use the $890 million earmarked for English learners in a wide range of purposes, from training teachers' aides who work with English learners, to running summer schools designed for them, to hiring family liaisons who speak the parents' native languages. The $375 million appropriated for migrant education is often used to hire dedicated teachers to travel close to where students live. By 'cherrypicking extreme examples,' the administration is seeking to conflate all students learning English with people who are in the country illegally, said Amaya Garcia, who directs education research at New America, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. In reality, the majority of English learners in public schools were born in the United States, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute. 'The way they're framing it is that we're using this money for undocumented students and families,' said Margarita Machado-Casas, president of the National Association of Bilingual Educators. 'It's a distraction. A distraction from what's actually happening: that 5.3 million English learners who speak lots of different languages, not just Spanish, will suffer.' Even if the students lack legal status, states may not deny public education to children in the country illegally under a 1982 Supreme Court decision known as Plyler v. Doe. Conservative politicians in states such as Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee have pursued policies that question whether immigrants without legal residency should have the right to a public education, raising the possibility of challenges to that landmark ruling. Advertisement Meanwhile, states and school districts are still trying to understand what it will mean for their students and their staff if these funds never arrive. In Oregon, eliminating grants for English learners and migrant students would 'undermine the state's efforts to increase academic outcomes for multilingual students, promote multilingualism, close opportunity gaps and provide targeted support to mobile and vulnerable student groups,' said Liz Merah, spokeswoman for the state's Department of Education. Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed from Washington.