Hundreds of millions in tax money goes to contracts for DEI groups, watchdog finds: 'Total racket'

EXCLUSIVE: Over the past respective years, a fewer twelve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) advisor groups person racked up implicit a 100 cardinal dollars successful taxpayer-funded contracts from K-12 schools crossed the country, a caller study by Defending Education found.

The report, shared with Fox News Digital, details however 41 DEI advisor groups garnered millions successful taxpayer-funded contracts from 303 schoolhouse districts and public education entities from 2021 until now.

In total, the groups collected implicit $123 cardinal from nationalist schools successful 40 states. The study recovered nationalist schoolhouse DEI contracts successful some reddish and bluish states, from Florida and Alabama to California and Washington.

Erika Sanzi, a spokesperson for Defending Education, described the schools-consultants concern arsenic a "total racket that makes schools worse" and often takes nary information of age-appropriateness successful curricula.

THE 'GRADING FOR EQUITY' PROPOSAL IS ABOUT LOWERING STANDARDS FOR STUDENTS, EXPERT SAYS

Over the past respective years, a fewer twelve advisor groups person racked up implicit a 100 cardinal dollars successful tax-dollar contracts from K-12 schools crossed the country, a caller study found. (Getty)

According to the report, the biggest victor successful the strategy was Amplify, a steadfast that provides nonrecreational improvement and curricula to schoolhouse districts, which scored a full of implicit $70,500,000.

The study states that successful a now-scrubbed connection connected its website, Amplify said its ngo is to "make education, and thereby the world, much equitable and accessible" and to "help teachers enactment their students successful constructing, questioning, expanding, and strengthening cognition of wherever they travel from and who they are becoming."

In response, a typical for Amplify told Fox News Digital that the radical "publishes textbooks and different instructional materials that assistance students larn reading, mathematics and science" and that "there is nary spot anyplace successful Amplify’s products, oregon successful the grooming programs astir however to usage them, for ideologies oregon governmental agendas." 

The typical said "our programs assistance students learn how to think, not what to think." 

The study highlights different advisor group, Adjusted Equity Solutions, which it says is associated with the Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute, that claims to assistance schools situation "whiteness and hegemonic epistemologies successful school," usage "equity audits to measurement pupil inclusiveness, policy, and practice" and service arsenic "advocate and societal activistic for community-based causes successful some the schoolhouse and vicinity community." 

MAHA REPORT RAISES CONCERNS ABOUT CHILDHOOD CHRONIC DISEASE

Students get astatine Benson High School for the archetypal time of hybrid acquisition for mediate and precocious schools connected April 19, 2021, successful Portland, Oregon. (Carlos Delgado/AP Images for Portland Public Schools)

This radical took successful implicit a cardinal dollars from nationalist schools during the survey period.

"Tinkering successful the minds of different people's children is large concern and countless K-12 schools crossed the state are progressive participants," Sanzi said. "They wage large bucks to participate into contracts with ideologues and activists who, successful turn, summation access, straight oregon indirectly, to a captive assemblage of young minds."

Speaking with Fox News Digital via Zoom, Sanzi said that "rather than this being a absorption connected benignant of world interventions, it's a batch of jargon that truthful acold has not proven itself to beryllium measurable. And there's truly not overmuch evidence, if any, that immoderate of this is helping students oregon helping schools oregon helping staff."

EDUCATION SECRETARY LINDA MCMAHON PUSHES BACK ON CLAIMS THAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION 'DOESN'T CARE ANYTHING ABOUT THE LAW'

Sanzi said that though these DEI groups sofa their activities successful agreeable presumption similar "belonging" and "empathy," they often extremity up being a "wolf successful sheep's clothing."

"At first, you're reasoning acquisition connected empathy, similar that's good," she said. "Who wouldn't privation their kid to beryllium empathetic? We privation that. Until you recognize that the acquisition connected empathy is going to beryllium astir thing similar a small miss successful her bath astatine school, a unit subordinate who's trans, truthful biologically male, but identifies arsenic female, comes into the restroom with her. She people feels uncomfortable due to the fact that that's a precise earthy feeling successful a condition similar that. But she's told that she needs to person ‘empathy’ for this grownup who identifies arsenic female, right? And that her discomfort is the problem… That feeling discomfort successful that concern is incorrect oregon makes her un-empathetic."

Morning prima lights the beforehand of the Department of Education gathering successful Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 2025. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

The Trump Department of Education has warned authorities acquisition departments successful each 50 states that they indispensable region diversity, equity and inclusion policies oregon hazard losing national funding.

Despite this, Sanzi said galore of these advisor groups person adjusted by scrubbing references to DEI connected their websites and utilizing different words to picture the aforesaid thing. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"We spot a batch of renaming," she said. "So, they mightiness say, 'Well, we're getting escaped of our DEI bureau oregon we're getting escaped of our equity officer.' [But] the impervious volition beryllium successful the pudding due to the fact that what we announcement often is that you'll spot a switch, similar abruptly we perceive the connection belonging a batch much now. And truthful the question becomes, ‘Are you getting escaped of it? Or are you conscionable rebranding it and shifting it determination other and taking it disconnected your website?’" 

"What galore radical don't recognize is that the founders of these advisor companies and the radical who tally them and the practitioners are activists. They are ideologues," she went on. "They person each close to judge that what they're transmitting is the close thing, but successful a public-school mounting that is required to support viewpoint diversity, these truly person nary place, not lone due to the fact that of the cost, not lone origin it's nationalist money, not lone due to the fact that they're not precise transparent astir what they're doing, but besides due to the fact that they are truly trying to propulsion an ideological docket connected different people's children."

The Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute did not respond to Fox News Digital's petition for comment.