Students, parents say anti-DEI push is a hindrance to learning at DOD schools

(CNN) — Recent Pentagon policies are having direct impacts on students at Defense Department schools around the globe and leaving students and their parents concerned they’re being disadvantaged by attending the schools, multiple students and parents told CNN.

Many of the changes stem from President Donald Trump’s executive order banning programs or initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. But Pentagon policies putting a freeze on civilian employees’ government credit cards, and broader freezes on the civilian workforce, are also impacting DOD families living abroad.

Recent policies from the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth briefly impacted student-athletes’ ability to travel to games or competitions in Europe; the availability of at least one AP class, which parents and students say is not expected to be offered because portions of the instruction mention gender and sexuality; student clubs; what books are offered in school libraries; and more.

“These kids in the [Department of Defense Education Activity] schools are taking the brunt of this administration’s decisions,” one DOD civilian in Germany, whose child is a high school sophomore, told CNN. The civilian added that while schools back in the US are insulated from some administration policy changes, DoDEA schools have no such ability.

“Here, they send down this edict and it has to be obeyed,” the civilian said. “It’s not a state thing — it’s directly from someone who is in authority over the school. It’s concerning.”

The feelings over those policies resulted in organized walkouts on Thursday at more than a dozen DoDEA schools around the globe.

“We stood for every voice that’s been silenced. For every story that’s been erased. For every student who’s been told they don’t belong,” a post on a public Instagram page for the walkouts said on Thursday. “We walked out because our schools should be places of learning, not censorship.”

Students and parents alike say the changes in their schools are disadvantaging students compared to their peers in the US. Multiple parents and students told CNN that AP Psychology will no longer be offered in DoDEA schools because of the DEI policies instituted by the Defense Department.

A DoDEA high school sophomore, who spoke to CNN with her parent’s permission, said she’d been looking forward to taking AP Psychology and it was “disappointing that I can’t take the class I wanted to take.”

“It’s frustrating we can’t get the same level of education as my peers in the states … we just already have less opportunities than schools in America, and this is narrowing our opportunities even more,” the sophomore said.

Will Griffin, a spokesman for DoDEA, told CNN students “are at the heart of everything we do in DoDEA and we will continue to maintain a learning environment where all students can learn, grow, and prepare for success in college and careers.”

“DoDEA remains committed to providing a high-quality education to military-connected students – as evidenced by DoDEA student performance on the 2022 and 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (known as ‘The Nation’s Report Card’) as the top school system in the country,” Griffin said. As for AP Psychology, Griffin said DoDEA is “continuing to work with the College Board concerning scheduling AP Psychology as a course” in the 2025-2026 school year.

Still, a second DOD civilian in Germany, who is also a DoDEA parent, told CNN there is concern about students having less to “distinguish themselves for college” against their peers who didn’t go to DoDEA schools.

“They come up with these policies and they are not actually thinking about the overseas demographic … It also feels like well, they don’t care about Europe — we all saw that in the Signal chat — but do they care about the service members over here?” the second DOD civilian said. “Do they care about the families over here?”

Students speak out: “It’s not about politics”

As a direct result of the new administration’s policies, students at DoDEA schools around the globe participated in walkouts on Thursday. The organized protest was expected to include more than a dozen schools, from England and Germany to South Korea and Japan.

“[A]t the beginning of February, when the executive orders were implemented, we saw things like Black History Month were taken away, posters around school … were like stripped from the walls, and clubs were disbanded,” said one student named Payton, who is only being identified by their first name and also spoke to CNN with his parent’s permission.

“It’s not about politics,” another student who participated in South Korea told CNN. “It’s not about hating America … it’s more about protecting the rights for every student regardless of their identity.”

“We really want to show the higher-ups in DoDEA that we aren’t going to accept our schools becoming political battlegrounds,” the student in South Korea said.

The DoDEA high school sophomore in Germany pointed to how policies have impacted teachers’ ability to communicate with students; she said teachers have been told to address transgender teenagers by the names and pronouns given to them at birth instead of their chosen names or pronouns.

“Transgender kids at my school — they’re supposed to call them by their birth name rather than the name they prefer,” the high school student said, adding the change is “alarming due to the high suicide rates among LGBT youth.”

The student in South Korea, who is on the student yearbook staff, said they’ve even been told they have to refer to transgender students by their birth names in the student yearbook.

“We have a problem … where our transgender students are already targeted,” the student said, “and now we’re making this a permanent part of their high school history.”

In the lead-up to the organized walkouts, DoDEA school administrators sent out letters to parents, warning them that their child could receive an unexcused absence if they participated. In similar walkouts over the last several weeks, parents and students said, they had received excused absences.

Griffin, the DoDEA spokesman, said DoDEA “does not support or endorse student walkouts,” and will “continue to encourage students to explore other avenues for civil engagement.”

“While student-led walkouts in the past have concluded without serious incidents, the cumulative disruption to the DoDEA school system negatively impacted classroom instruction and pulled resources away from normal school operations to ensure student safety,” Griffin said.

The warnings seemed to have an impact; the student in South Korea said fewer students participated than expected, and the first DOD civilian in Germany said nearly half of the students who participated in a walkout at his child’s high school last month did not participate on Thursday.

The second DOD civilian in Germany who is a DoDEA parent said the walkouts are an example of how in-tune that generation is with the news and current events.

“I think that some adults, if you don’t have kids in that age group, you make an assumption that they’re not informed,” the civilian said. “But they’re way more informed than you realize, and doing a lot more research than you realize.”

The two DoDEA parents who spoke to CNN — whose children go to separate schools ­— told CNN parents have largely been left in the dark on how DOD policies are impacting schools.

When schools began pulling books from libraries, for example, they weren’t told what criteria the schools were using or what books were being removed.

“That is the argument they’re using in every other state – parental involvement, parental authority,” the first DOD civilian in Germany said. “But here, they’re completely cutting parents out of the loop.”

Griffin, the DoDEA spokesman, said based on Trump’s executive orders and Hegseth’s guidance, DoDEA is reviewing policies and library books to ensure compliance, and “limiting access to materials under review” in the meantime.

The vague DEI orders have left leaders at every echelon stressed, the second DOD civilian said, feeling that the Pentagon has pushed down rushed orders without any effective guidance. And the lack of guidance “feels on purpose,” the civilian said, “so that when somebody goes too far, and everyone complains about it, they [the administration] have the ability to say, ‘Well, we didn’t tell them to do that.’”

“Everyone is seeing it, everyone is feeling it,” the civilian said of the palpable stress overseas. “It’s felt at every level.”

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