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On April 23, President Donald Trump signed seven executives orders impacting elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education. Leaders from the departments of labor, commerce, and education, including Secretary Linda McMahon, joined the president in the Oval Office.
The orders address school discipline, artificial intelligence (AI), workforce development, apprenticeships, HBCUs, accreditation, and more.
Subsequently, McMahon released a statement about the orders.
Here is what you need to know.
K-12
New guidance on school discipline forthcoming
Trump signed an executive order titled “Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies,” accompanied by this additional information.
The order requires McMahon within 30 days to issue new guidance to school districts and state departments of education regarding school discipline.
McMahon said the order and forthcoming guidance will give “teachers the authority now to have discipline in their classroom and discipline the person who is being disruptive.”
Within six months, McMahon in coordination with other federal leaders must submit a report to the president on “discriminatory-equity-ideology-based school discipline and behavior modification techniques in American public education” since 2009.
In her statement, McMahon said, “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.” She said schools have been “forced to consider equity and inclusion when imposing discipline.”
Inez “Annette” Albright, who previously worked in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024, was on hand as a special guest for the signing ceremony. In June 2016, Albright — who worked as a substitute teacher, tutor, and behavioral modification technician — was involved in an altercation with students. She now advocates for safer schools.
No public school in North Carolina has ever been designated persistently dangerous. You can see the most recent data on school crimes, dropouts, and suspensions in North Carolina here.
Fostering interest and expertise in AI
Trump signed an executive order titled, “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” accompanied by this additional information.
Will Sharf, an attorney and now White House Staff Secretary who presented and explained each of the executive orders before handing them to the president, said this order will assure that the country is training “the workforce of the future by ensuring that schoolchildren, young Americans, are adequately trained in AI tools so that they can be competitive in the economy years from now into the future as AI becomes a bigger and bigger deal.”
The order, which broadly seeks to improve education through AI and enhance teacher training on AI, specifically:
- Establishes the White House Task Force on AI Education;
- Establishes a Presidential AI Challenge, which will encourage and highlight student and educator achievements in AI, promote wide geographic adoption of technological advancement, and foster collaboration between government, academia, philanthropy, and industry to address national challenges with AI solutions;”
- Seek to increase participation in AI-related Registered Apprenticeships;
- Establishes public-private partnerships to provide resources for K-12 AI education; and
- Prioritizes the use of AI in discretionary grant programs for teacher training and prioritizes research on the use of AI in education.
Higher education
Modernize American workforce programs
Trump signed an executive order titled, “Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future,” accompanied by this additional information.
This order says, “It is the policy of the United States to optimize and target Federal investments in workforce development to align with our country’s reindustrialization needs and equip American workers to fill the growing demand for skilled trades and other occupations. My Administration will further protect and strengthen Registered Apprenticeships and build on their successes to seize new opportunities and unlock the limitless potential of the American worker.”
The order requires a report within 90 days setting forth strategies to help the American worker, and within six months a plan to reach and surpass 1 million new active apprentices.
In her statement, McMahon said, “Not every student needs to attend a four-year university to enter a family-sustaining career. The Trump Administration will support communities across the country that are offering career-aligned programs like apprenticeships and dual enrollment to best meet the needs of their workforce.”
Continued support for HBCUs
Trump signed an executive order titled, “White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” accompanied by this additional information.
The order seeks to continue the president’s work in his first term “to elevate the value and impact of our Nation’s HBCUs as beacons of educational excellence and economic opportunity that serve as some of the best cultivators of tomorrow’s leaders in business, government, academia, and the military.” It says it is the policy of the administration to support HBCUs, and it establishes both the White House Initiative on HBCUs and the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs.
McMahon will serve as one of the advisors.
Overhauling the higher education accreditation process
Trump signed an executive order titled, “Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education,” accompanied by this additional information.
“University accreditation is currently a process controlled by third party organizations — that’s by statute, by law,” said Sharf. “Many off those third party accreditors have relied on sort of woke ideology to accredit universities instead of accrediting based on merit and performance.”
The order charges the U.S. Department of Education to look holistically at what Sharf called “this accreditation mess.”
McMahon will be able to hold accreditors accountable “through denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination of accreditation recognition, for accreditors’ poor performance or violations of federal civil rights law.”
Going forward, according to the additional information provided, accreditation with focus on the the following principles:
- Recognizing new accreditors to foster competition;
- Requiring institutions to use program-level, student outcome data to improve results, without reference to race, ethnicity, or sex;
- Requiring high-quality, high-value academic programs;
- Prioritizing intellectual diversity among faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning;
- Launching an experimental site to test innovative quality assurance pathways;
- Increasing the consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness of the accreditor recognition review process; and
- Streamlining both accreditor recognition and institutional transitions between accreditors.
“The existing accreditation monopoly raises costs, contributes to the ever-increasing tuition and fees faced by American families, favors legacy four-year institutions, blocks new accreditors from the market, interferes with states’ governing board decisions, and pushes universities in ideological directions when they should be focused on core subjects,” said McMahon in her statement. “The Department of Education will create a competitive marketplace of higher education accreditors, which will give colleges and universities incentives and support to focus on lowering college costs, fostering innovation, and delivering a high-quality postsecondary education.”
A law passed during the 2023 long session now requires North Carolina colleges and universities to change accreditors every 10 years, or after each cycle. There are six accrediting agencies for higher education listed in the law.
Colleges and universities must disclose foreign funding
Trump signed an executive order titled, “Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence at American Universities,” accompanied by this additional information.
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, 20 U.S.C. 1011f, requires institutions of higher education to report significant sources of foreign funding, and this order makes clear that going forward it will be enforced.
The administration says it is “ending secrecy surrounding foreign funding in higher education to protect students, research, and the marketplace of ideas.”
Eliminating the use of disparate impact theory
The Trump signed an executive order titled, “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” accompanied by this additional information, which will impact education and all other federal agencies.
According to a manual from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, disparate impact theory ensures “that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination.”
In calling for the enactment of the Civil Rights Act, according to the Department of Justice, President John F. Kennedy stated:
Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination. Direct discrimination by Federal, State, or local governments is prohibited by the Constitution. But indirect discrimination, through the use of Federal funds, is just as invidious; and it should not be necessary to resort to the courts to prevent each individual violation.
This order makes it the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact theory as far as legally possible.
The order says, “A bedrock principle of the United States is that all citizens are treated equally under the law. This principle guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes. … It encourages meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream.”
You can watch the signing ceremony for all of the orders here. It starts at 22:07.
