FLINT, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Flint Community Schools said it will stay committed to its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs in the face of a Trump administration deadline to end all such initiatives.

The deadline approaches.

The U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights sent all school districts a letter on Feb. 14 stating they had 14 days to dismantle DEI policies or face losing federal money.

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“When I think of equality, something that we have fought for all of our lives and that’s what we’re gonna continue to fight for, that’s not political for me,” Superintendent Kevelin Jones told WSMH this week. “It’s just who we are and what we do.”

State assessment results.

While the district defended DEI policies it has in place, what has been lost in the discussion is how poorly Flint students are doing on state assessments.

According to the state of Michigan, results on the 2023-24 standardized M-STEP show Flint did not perform well.

For example, from third grade to eight grade, the proficiency of students on testing on math ranged from as low as 2.1% (seventh grade) to only as high as 6.8% (third grade).

The results were not much improved on English Language Arts testing. The percent of students deemed proficient ranged from as low as 3.7% (third grade) to as only as high as 16.2% (eighth grade).

The students tested at the high school level were found to be overwhelmingly not proficient. For example, in the M-STEP standardized tests for 11th grades, just 5% were proficient when tested on social studies and 7% were proficient when tested on science.