Government agencies should choose which research projects to fund based on merit, not ideology. But my investigation into U.S. Department of Education grants reveals that administrators prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) when evaluating grant applications. In some cases, reviewers considered the racial make-up of research personnel when assessing applicants’ qualifications.
These applications were directed to the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program, through which the department allocates research funds to schools and other nonprofits to develop inventive solutions to educational problems. The EIR program had a $284 million budget for new awards in fiscal year 2023.
The federal government’s diversity obsession has distorted EIR’s priorities. As a result, American taxpayers are funding projects that promote equity in AP Computer Science, so-called “restorative justice” initiatives for misbehaving students, and “culturally responsive” teaching. EIR has embedded racial considerations into the grant-evaluation process. It does so by assessing applicants’ “Quality of Project Personnel” (QPP), a 10-point evaluation category that accounts for almost 10 percent of an applicant’s total score. The department uses this category, which first appeared in grant evaluation documents in 2022, to measure whether prospective grant recipients would “encourage[] applications for employment from persons who are members of groups that have traditionally been underrepresented based on race, color, national origin, gender, age, or disability.” The department notes, almost as an afterthought, that “the Secretary [also] considers the qualifications, including relevant training and experience, of key project personnel.”
While the department stops short of explicitly calling for discriminatory hiring, comments and scores suggest that reviewers have awarded applicants points for detailing the demographics of their workforce and for outlining plans to hire more people from underrepresented groups. In fact, applicants were far likelier to have received a high QPP score if reviewers provided positive feedback regarding the racial composition of their research team or their racially targeted recruitment practices.
These criteria redounded to the benefit of Florida’s Duval County Public Schools. In its application, the district mentioned that it had “aligned with other community partners” to pursue “a goal of recruiting 1,000 minority educators to the district within the next two years.” One reviewer praised the district in the evaluation’s QPP section, listing as a strength Duval’s commitment to “hire individuals from underrepresented groups.”
In another application, reviewers highlighted nonprofit SMASH’s research-team demographics—“50% Black and 30% Latine, 58% women, and 3% nonbinary”—as a strength. SMASH indicated in its application that the majority of the facilitators and STEM professionals that it recruits for its computer-science equity project are “Black, Latine, Native, or women.” One evaluator praised this approach, stating that “students should see themselves reflected in computing to develop their own sense of belonging in computer science.”
Applicants not demonstrating their commitment to racial considerations in hiring tended to get lower QPP scores. And EIR reviewers weren’t satisfied with colorblindness and nondiscrimination: “While applicant states a non-discrimination policy and commitment to diversity, they do not specify tools or resources they will use to encourage employees from underrepresented groups when a vacancy occurs,” one reviewer wrote of a Cook Center for Human Connection proposal.
Similarly, a reviewer listed the Human Restoration Project’s failure to describe a recruitment plan for underrepresented groups as a weakness, despite the fact that the HRP had outlined its research personnel’s relevant qualifications. “It is important that a process be in place for such advertising and recruitment of underrepresented individuals in case a project personnel position becomes vacant during this five-year project,” the evaluator wrote.
Its diversity fixation suggests that the Department of Education hasn’t learned from past mistakes. Consider the fate of EIR’s predecessor, Investing in Innovation (i3). That initiative, active from 2010 to 2016, was supposed to fund rigorous research that would help close academic achievement gaps. But a February 2024 report found that only 26 percent of i3 research benefited students, despite $1.4 billion of taxpayer dollars spent on its projects.
The i3 program failed, in part, because much of the work it sponsored had less than ideal research designs; only a quarter of the grants were high-quality randomized controlled trials. Ideological and other motives can sometimes prompt researchers to compromise on quality, and EIR’s evaluators seem committed to placing DEI before methodological rigor. Only 58 percent of the grants that received an above-median score for “Promoting Equity,” were randomized control trials, compared with 95 percent of approved grants that scored poorly on the equity metric. In other words, the EIR seems to have held equity-focused research projects to a lower methodological standard. And these grants receive significant funding: over 70 percent of the EIR’s appropriated funding in fiscal year 2023 went to projects that received points in the equity section of their application.
Education research can and should address real problems—student discipline, teacher retention, and math instruction. But studies compromised by progressive activism only waste taxpayer dollars and leave us in the dark on how to improve education for all students.
Photo: Catherine McQueen / Moment via Getty Images