Did the Department of Education End Disparate Impact Rules for Schools?
Short answer: Yes. On July 24, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education published a final rule striking disparate-impact liability from its Title VI regulations. It took effect the same day, with no public comment period. Going forward, the Office for Civil Rights will only investigate a school policy if someone can show it was intended to discriminate.
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Lightly edited from the episode audio for readability.
Big O (reading the letter): I think this will hit home for Big El, and for you too, Krush, given your wife's profession. "Twenty-two years I've taught in Cleveland public schools. Eighth grade English. Same building, three principals, two rounds of layoffs."
"I'm writing because something happened on July 24th that not one parent in my building has heard about, and I've decided that the silence is the story. The Department of Education published a final rule removing disparate impact from its Title VI regulation. Plain English: for sixty years, if a school policy hit Black kids harder than everybody else, the federal government could investigate it even when nobody could prove anyone meant it that way. That is gone. Effective immediately, as of July 24th, the Office for Civil Rights will only look at a policy if it can show somebody intended to discriminate."
"I want you to understand what that tool actually did in a building like mine. Nobody ever writes down 'suspend the Black boys more.' What they write down is a dress code, a tardy policy, a referral form. Then you pull the numbers at the end of the year and the same kids are in the same office and the same seats are empty. Disparate impact is how you got to have that conversation with a straight face. Without it, all you have is a feeling and a spreadsheet nobody has to look at."
"And they did it without public comment. Published Friday, effective the same day. They didn't ask anybody. The Department says the old rule was in considerable tension with the statute and the Constitution, and that this brings the regulation in line with Title VI's original public meaning. That's the argument, and I'd rather you wrestle with it than pretend they didn't make one."
"I filed an OCR complaint myself in 2019. Nothing came of it. Nothing came of the two I watched other teachers file either. So my anger this week has a hole in the middle of it, and I'd rather hand it to you than let you think I'm certain. Does removing a protection nobody was enforcing actually change anything? Or does the paper still matter because one day somebody might pick it up? Is intent a fair standard for a country where nobody has written their intent down since 1965? And the one I really want an answer to: when the rule that protected our children was quietly deleted on a Friday afternoon and not one of us noticed for a week, whose failure is that?" — Evet, Cleveland, Ohio.
Big O: I'm going to let El go first, given his years in the public school system, and then we'll move to Krush.
Big El: I went to a conference this past weekend with other educators who are going to be doing some policy work. This did come up, but largely from the standpoint of how little most people know. Most parents have no idea this is taking place. They won't have any idea until it lands on their doorstep. Like so many of the policy removals and changes we've seen at the Department of Education, parents will never see this until it's a full-fledged tsunami that has gone through their district — largely because it isn't going to make national news. It's not going to be on your local news. There's nothing here with any entertainment value.
Big El: But it is a very, very bad thing. What I want us to be aware of is that this is one step in an intentional process to get education back into the hands of whiteness. From the inception of schools — pre-K, kindergarten, grade school, college — the overall intent has been to create workers. They're not really looking at the discrimination component now, and to be honest they weren't before either. The process to get discrimination charges levied against somebody in a school, particularly in administration or an HR department, is damn near impossible. So it's a horrible thing, it's something we should be concerned about, and unfortunately most of us aren't aware of it. I don't know how to ring the alarm, because it doesn't have any glitter or whistles to draw people in.
Krush: Do you not think you can tie it to the dismantling of DEI and break it down the way she broke it down?
Big El: I can, but I also think most everyday poor and working-class Black folks don't prioritize DEI. I'm not saying they're ignorant, and I'm not saying they don't care — it's just not high on the list. They've got bigger fish to fry. DEI has a much larger impact on people a little higher up than poor and working-class folks.
Big O: Then how do we frame this so it has that level of gravitas? These are literally our children. She laid it out: it's not "hey, put the Black boy in suspension." These kids end up in these positions, and most of the time it impacts us regardless of the racial breakdown of the school. So how do we give this weight we can carry into the community?
Big El: At the local level, through more beloved teachers having these conversations about what's taking place in the schools. Because there's a connection between this and what's happening with IEPs. There's an overwhelming majority of Black males — specifically, but not exclusively — getting labeled with emotional disturbance. Emotional disturbance can literally be just about anything.
Big O: Tell folks what an IEP is.
Big El: An IEP is an Individualized Education Program. It's for young people who have a special education diagnosis. There are thirteen diagnoses, and emotional disturbance, besides autism, is the fastest-growing diagnosis among Black children in this country. A lot of Black boys.
Krush: My daughter has sickle cell. She also has an IEP. When I first heard about it, I thought it was exclusively for somebody with special needs challenges. That's what I thought initially.
Big El: So there's that connection. When parents start pushing back and calling discrimination because their child is unfairly diagnosed or their IEP isn't being met, that fight is going to be even more challenging now, because that oversight doesn't exist anymore. There's no one there to police special education the way there used to be.
Big O: The only thing I can compare it to is my experience with my child's school developing her IEP. The counselors and teachers were very accommodating to what we believed she needed — but we also made sure to bring in her outside doctors to join the IEP meetings and lay out the groundwork, so it wasn't just us saying we wanted something. It was based on fact.
Big El: But our brothers and sisters don't have that same network or ability. Hence why so many of them easily accept the IEP. And I don't want to say a lot of our people are doing it for a money grab — but there is a component there. If you have an IEP, there's a check you can get; there's a way to get disability. It's not life-changing generational wealth money. But when the light bill is short fifty dollars, it might come in. And three or four IEPs in a house where you're living check to check, that's an issue.
Krush: When I was an attendance counselor for DCPS, the word of the day was misdiagnosis. It's happening a lot, and misdiagnosis leads to financial windfalls for a variety of people in the chain. Special education is big money. You actually make money from the mistakes — and then from correcting those mistakes over a long period of time. I've seen mistakes corrected over the course of ten months to the tune of about $110,000.
Big El: The other side of what she's mentioning is that if you're a teacher in good standing with the community and the school, it's incredibly difficult to rise up, start shedding light and become a whistleblower about these things — because there's no security. There's nothing to protect you. There's only so much the union can do.
Big O: The union can make sure the district follows the steps to terminate you. They can't protect you from being terminated.
Big El: Right. So a lot of people have to be careful. We highlighted the Ryan Clark situation on this podcast. There are a whole lot of people who won't speak up because they don't want to get caught up.
Big O: Last question before we move on: what about the school boards? Can parents being present at school board meetings and making noise do anything? I know this is a federal ruling, so there's a cap on what can be done — but does showing up have any impact?
Big El: Everybody has to understand the politics and power of school boards. You go into a public school board meeting and in most cases you're capped at three minutes to speak. The school board does not have to respond to you in those three minutes. It's not a dialogue. There are other meetings school boards have where you can have that conversation — you have to find the one that allows it. Otherwise you give them a three-minute statement, they say nothing, you sit down pissed off, and nothing changes.
Big El: How much power your school board has depends on your city. Some big cities — Philadelphia, for instance — have a wildly powerful school board because of the number of schools and kids they oversee. The school board here in Coatesville doesn't have that same power. There are levels to it. So there are ways to navigate it, but you actually have to get involved and find out who your school board people are.
Big O: Run for school board. Get on the school board.
Big El: We talk about PTA — get on that school board. That's where the power is. You can even go a step higher, to the superintendent level, if you want to. You just have to go for it.
Krush: During the whole pandemic there were small pockets, small organizations that looped together and went from district to district, because their voices had weight. Moving in numbers means a lot.
Big El: I always say Black folks are ready to fight, but we are currently being out-organized by the right. They don't have us outnumbered. They have us out-organized.
Krush: And don't forget they gather support from unexpected places — they pluck small unions from small towns, gather support from different sectors and smaller industries, and add them to their numbers.
Big O: I want to go back to what Big El said. You believe they have a stronger desire to fight?
Big El: No — I think we have a stronger desire to fight. I think we just don't know how to fight.
Big O: I dig it, 100%.
What actually changed on July 24
For about sixty years, the Title VI regulations let the federal government look at outcomes. If a school's dress code, tardy policy, or referral form put Black kids in the office and out of their seats at rates nothing else explained, the Office for Civil Rights could open a case — without anyone having to produce a memo saying that was the goal. That tool is called disparate impact. As of July 24, it is gone from the Department's regulations at 34 CFR Part 100.
The rule was published in the Federal Register, took effect immediately, and skipped notice-and-comment rulemaking entirely. The Department cites Executive Order 14281 and its reading of what Title VI's text actually authorizes. Education lawyers are already flagging the missing comment period as a legal problem in its own right.
Why "intent" is a much higher bar than it sounds
Evet, a Cleveland public schools teacher of 22 years, wrote in and said it better than any press release. Nobody writes down "suspend the Black boys more." What they write down is a dress code. A tardy policy. A referral form. Then you pull the numbers in June and the same kids are in the same office and the same seats are empty.
Disparate impact was how you could have that conversation with a straight face. Take it away and what is left is a feeling and a spreadsheet nobody is obligated to look at. As Evet put it, intent is a strange standard in a country where almost nobody has written their intent down since 1965.
The special education connection nobody is covering
Big El pushed this somewhere the national coverage has not gone: IEPs. An Individualized Education Program requires one of thirteen qualifying diagnoses, and emotional disturbance — a category broad enough to absorb almost any behavior — is, after autism, the fastest-growing diagnosis among Black children in this country. Disproportionately Black boys.
When a parent believes their child was misdiagnosed, or that the plan on paper is not being delivered, disparate impact was one of the few levers that did not require proving what an administrator was thinking. Families with a network — outside doctors, an advocate, somebody who has read the law — will still find their way through. Families without one just lost the appeal that did not require a lawyer. It is the same extraction pattern Black women in school leadership have been describing for years.
The Department's argument, stated fairly
The Department says the old regulation was in tension with the statute and the Constitution, and that this restores Title VI's original public meaning. It has support: in Alexander v. Sandoval (2001), the Supreme Court said it was "beyond dispute" that Title VI itself reaches only intentional discrimination. On that reading, the agency rule went further than Congress did, and rescinding it is housekeeping.
You should be able to answer that argument instead of pretending it was not made. The answer is that a rule can be legally tidy and still leave a child unprotected. And if the case were that clean, there would have been no reason to skip public comment — which is exactly the fight we keep having about who gets to define what counts as racism in the first place.
What still protects your child
The rescission is narrower than the panic. Intentional discrimination under Title VI is still illegal and still investigable. Section 504, IDEA, and Title IX are separate laws with their own obligations — an IEP is still legally enforceable, and a district that fails to deliver one is still in violation. Many states have civil rights laws that go further than the federal floor. What changed is one federal enforcement route, not the entire floor. This is not legal advice; if your child is affected, talk to a special education advocate or attorney in your state.
What you can actually do about it
Krush asked the practical question: do school board meetings matter? Partly. Public comment is usually capped at three minutes and the board is not required to answer you — that session is theater. The dialogue happens in the committee meetings you have to go find. The real power is in the seat, not the microphone. Run for the board. Get on the PTA. Learn who your superintendent answers to.
Big El's closing line is the one that should sit with all of us: we are not outnumbered, we are out-organized. It is not that we lack the will to fight. Most of the time, we just have not been taught how. That is a solvable problem, and it starts with knowing this rule changed at all.
Watch the full conversation
Big O, Big El and Krush break down the July 24 rule, the IEP pipeline, and what organizing actually looks like at the district level. Watch the full episode above, and if this is the kind of breakdown you want more of, become part of the family.
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