The Education Department is opening an investigation into claims that the Los Angeles Unified School District is violating Title VI, which prohibits race discrimination.
The DOE is specifically looking into the district’s “Black Achievement Program,” race-based programming for black students that is not open to students of other races.
Defending Education, a nonprofit education-focused grassroots organization, filed the initial complaint in March.
The newly opened investigation also comes after the Trump administration joined a racial discrimination lawsuit against LAUSD in February, alleging the district’s decades-old desegregation mandates amount to discriminatory practices that harm non-minority students by giving preferential treatment to others.
The nonprofit group celebrated the DOE’s action.
The Education Department is opening an investigation into claims the Los Angeles Unified School District is violating Title VI, which prohibits race discrimination. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images “Los Angeles Unified School District was running a race-based ‘ “student success” program,” Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President and Senior Legal Fellow at Defending Education, said in a statement.
“After our initial civil rights complaint, LAUSD pretended it had halted the program, but it was later revealed that the program was still alive and well.
“We are incredibly gratified that the Department of Education has decided to re-examine LAUSD in order to ensure that its racial politicking and misuse of federal funding will finally come to an end,” she added.
Defending Education previously filed the complaint in 2023 during the Biden administration, but it was dismissed because the DOE ruled there was no evidence of a violation because the district had revised the program.
LAUSD is facing controversy on all sides. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is on administrative leave as the FBI looks into him, leaving the district to appoint an acting official, Chief of School Operations Andrés E. Chait, in his place.
The district also recently gave teachers a whopping nearly 14% pay raise despite lagging student performance and Carvalho’s corruption probe.
The California Post reached out to LAUSD for comment.
