President Donald Trump issued executive orders late Wednesday promoting artificial intelligence initiatives in K-12 schools and calling for changes to federal school discipline guidance.
Trump's 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 task force will be expected 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 task force must also create public-private partnerships with industry organizations, academic institutions and nonprofits to provide AI resources for K-12 schools. Trump's executive order gives the task force 180 days after announcing the first round of partnerships to ensure any identified federal funding is “ready for use” in K-12 AI education.
The order further directs U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon within the next 120 days to prioritize AI teacher training programs through discretionary grant programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Title II of the Higher Education Act. These programs could cover teacher training for using AI to reduce time-intensive administrative tasks, improve teacher training and evaluation, and provide professional development to help educators integrate AI fundamentals into "all subject areas."
“Education should prepare students for success in life, which means that American classrooms must better align their activities to meet the demands of accelerating innovation and a rapidly changing workforce,” McMahon said in a Wednesday statement. As AI "reshapes every industrial sector, it is vitally important that the next generation of students is prepared to leverage this technology in all aspects of their professional lives.”
Trump signed the AI executive order a day after a draft version was first surfaced by The Washington Post. Word of the expected executive order shocked some education technology experts given that the directive appeared to be drafted just a month after the Trump administration abolished the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology.
School discipline
The second K-12-related executive order signed Wednesday, Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies, calls for 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.
Trump's new order states that previous federal guidance on school discipline was based on “discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology.” As an example, it referenced a 2014 Dear Colleague letter — rescinded during the first Trump administration and then “effectively reinstated” in 2023 under the Biden administration — that warned schools could lose federal funding if their disciplinary rates were racially disproportionate.
Under the new order, McMahon is to enforce “appropriate action” against states and school districts that don’t comply with Title VI protections against racial discrimination in school discipline practices.
In coordination with Attorney General Pam Bondi, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, McMahon is to submit a report to Trump assessing the status of “discriminatory-equity-ideology-based school discipline and behavior modification techniques” in public schools.
McMahon, in her Wednesday statement, said school “disciplinary decisions should be based solely on students’ behavior and actions.”
“A student’s success in adulthood starts with how they perform in a classroom, and we should teach our kids to discern right and wrong from a young age. Yet, under the Biden-Harris Administration, schools were forced to consider equity and inclusion when imposing discipline,” McMahon said.
“Their policies," McMahon said, "placed racial equity quotas over student safety — encouraging schools to turn a blind eye to poor or violent behavior in the name of inclusion.”
The two K-12 directives are among six executive orders that Trump issued late Wednesday. The other four relate to higher education and concern accreditation, historically Black colleges and universities, workforce training, and foreign gifts and contracts to colleges.
