The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced Tuesday that it has opened an investigation into whether MPS improperly considers race when disciplining students. Federal officials specifically pointed to Milwaukee education leaders criticizing race-neutral school policies as products of systemic “whiteness” and “seemingly encouraging school officials to consider race in disciplinary practices.”
The investigation comes as the Trump administration formally reverses an approach to school discipline that traces back to the Obama administration.
In 2014, the Obama Education and Justice departments issued a controversial “Dear Colleague” letter warning school districts that even facially race-neutral discipline policies could trigger federal civil rights scrutiny if suspensions or expulsions disproportionately affected students of a particular race.
The policy relied on a “disparate impact” theory of civil rights enforcement. In practice, critics argued, districts faced pressure to reduce racial disparities in discipline statistics — even when disparities resulted from enforcement of otherwise neutral rules. The Heritage Foundation argued in 2018 that the policy incentivized schools to avoid disciplining students in order to produce more racially balanced outcomes.
That history is particularly relevant in Milwaukee.
MPS was investigated by the Obama-era Office for Civil Rights over racial disparities in discipline and reached an agreement with federal officials in 2017 aimed at producing more equitable outcomes. More recently, MPS attracted national attention after a district memo encouraged educators examining disciplinary disparities to consider practices that came from a “lens of Whiteness.”
Meanwhile, Milwaukee teachers have repeatedly raised alarms about violence and disorder inside schools.
One longtime MPS special education teacher described her school as “out of control” after being attacked by a parent. Records she provided to Spectrum News documented dozens of pages of incidents involving students hitting, biting and punching teachers and attacking classmates. At another MPS school, police were called 73 times in a single school year amid reports of fighting, aggression and drug use.
Those problems aren’t occurring in a vacuum. Wisconsin is struggling to keep teachers in classrooms, and educators consistently identify student behavior and working conditions among the reasons they consider leaving. Statewide teacher turnover remains elevated, while Wisconsin DPI data show nearly half of teachers who enter the profession leave within eight years.
Republicans attempted to address classroom disorder this session with the Teacher Bill of Rights, AB 614, which would have strengthened teachers’ authority to manage disruptive behavior and required parental notification following serious incidents. Assembly Democrats opposed the legislation, and Democrat Gov. Tony Evers ultimately vetoed it.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany has said he would sign the legislation if elected governor.
Now, after years in which Washington pressured schools to scrutinize discipline through the lens of racial outcomes, MPS finds itself under federal investigation for potentially going too far in exactly that direction.
