The same people in Washington who are making students hungrier, removing their families’ access to healthcare and stripping resources from our schools are subpoenaing Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King and holding a hearing about parental rights and the content in our classrooms.
As a Black mother of a CPS student and as a 10-year educator in our schools, I can tell you that if they want to see what’s harming students, they should look in the mirror. If they want to see how to protect and support student success, especially in a majority Black and brown school district like ours, they should be investing in our district, not investigating it.
In Chicago, we’re reconstructing after the damage done when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 schools in predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods in the city. We’re rebuilding from the generations of disinvestment. And we are creating schools that can provide world-class education by also addressing the systemic inequities of trauma, poverty and racism — whose impact doesn’t go away just because a school bell rings.
The school my daughter attended had teachers who brought in programs that helped her understand who she was and why that mattered, who refused to let her disappear into the middle of the room. She just graduated eighth grade with straight A’s. I am proud of her. I am also clear-eyed about what it took to get her there, the extra work so many Black families put in for our children’s success and what is still missing from our district to make that universal.
We need the federal government to be a partner in that effort, not a ringleader in political show trials. In the past, the U.S. Department of Education played a crucial role in upholding civil rights and making our schools more welcoming. When the Departments of Education and Justice issued guidelines warning against zero-tolerance discipline policies pushing Black students out of classrooms, Illinois passed landmark legislation making suspension and expulsion a last resort. In Chicago, Black students had been suspended at more than six times the rate of white students in 2017, according to an analysis by The Chicago Reporter. That is what accountability from Washington looks like when it works.
This week’s hearing is a warning that the federal government is now doing the opposite.
Instead of advancing civil rights, it is outright attacking them. Instead of supporting civics education, it is deeming that kind of education inappropriate.
Programs that lift all, such as CPS’ Black Student Success Plan, are not just mandated by Illinois state law, they are designed to reduce discipline disparities, put more Black teachers in classrooms, bring culturally responsive teaching into schools and close a gap that I have been watching widen my entire career.
My first college paper 20 years ago was on that gap. We are still having the same conversation in 2026.
This plan is Chicago’s attempt to finally change that. It is a reflection of our values today to make better the impact of segregationist values from yesterday.
But now President Donald Trump’s administration is calling it racial discrimination. These officials are gutting the very Department of Education that once forced this city to reckon with how it was treating Black children. They want to eliminate that kind of accountability permanently, and they want every other city watching to know what happens when you refuse to go along.
This is not about parents or the content of our curriculum. It is not about fairness to other students. Good schools recognize a need and respond to it — whether it be for students with disabilities, English learners, students experiencing homelessness or students in communities affected by racism. When you bring mental health support into a school, every child benefits. When you bring culturally responsive teaching into a classroom, every child in that building learns in a richer environment.
Chicago is not being investigated for any reason other than one of the largest and most diverse school districts in the country is actually welcoming and affirming its student body. This is an anathema to the vision this administration has for the country, and it wants to make an example of us.
I come to work every day because I believe in what Chicago is trying to build for its children. Federal officials can call it whatever they want. As a mother, a teacher and someone who has spent years studying what children need to thrive, I know what it actually is. A city that decided its Black children are worth fighting for.
That is the Chicago they are afraid of.
Taneesha Henderson, M.Ed., MSW, is a Chicago special education teacher of 10 years and a member of the Chicago Teachers Union.
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