Teachers in Massachusetts warned that President Donald Trump's recent executive actions targeting "woke" education in America's schools would hurt students and threaten the academic freedom of teachers in the classroom, according to a new report.

On January 29, Trump signed an executive order stripping federal funding from K-12 schools that teach critical race theory (CRT) and that promote "radical indoctrination" in gender ideology.

The teaching of CRT, and other controversial content in schools, has sparked backlash from parents at school board meetings across the nation over the past several years. During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to cut federal funding for schools that promote CRT, transgender ideology and "any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children." 

Some New England teachers are worried the new restrictions on teaching CRT could cause teachers to self-censor out of fear that any discussion on race would make them a target of the new administration, The Boston Globe reported.

TEACHER'S UNIONS PROTEST TRUMP'S EXECUTIVE ORDERS ON EDUCATION WHILE SCHOOL CHOICE ADVOCATES CHEER

"It’s sending a chilling effect," retired history teacher Tom Jordan said. "Every teacher I’ve talked to is completely freaked out by it."

According to the Globe report, the largest teachers' unions in the state have come out to denounce Trump's attack on CRT.

Jessica Tang, president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, told the Globe, "If we’re not taught that history and we don’t know what happened, then we don’t understand why things are the way they are today. And then I think it undermines democracy in the longer run."

Marcus Walker, a humanities teacher at Fenway High School in Boston, worried that Trump's actions would harm the academic freedom of teachers and set up students to learn a "dishonest" view of America's history.

"As citizens, we are obligated to be responsible. We’re obligated to understand our government, to learn how the government works, and we’re obligated to get accurate information," Walker said in the report. "All of that gets short-circuited if we’re teaching history that is dishonest."

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In 2021, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents released a statement denying that CRT was taught in K-12 schools in the state.

Trump's order on CRT was met with criticism from national teachers' unions and praise from school choice advocates.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten accused Trump of unfairly tarnishing teachers and making their jobs more difficult with the executive order on CRT.

"Today is a sad day because the Trump administration is doing exactly what it accuses others of: creating division and fear in classrooms across America," Weingarten wrote in a press release. 

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Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, told Fox News Digital that she believes American parents want the reform Trump is bringing to the education space. 

"President Trump’s Executive Orders on DEI, CRT, gender ideology, and school choice are extremely welcome news to parental rights advocates across the country," Neily said. "We have been waiting for an administration that treats parents as allies rather than enemies and works to curb the proliferation of leftist political ideology in the classroom, while helping to reorient schools towards their original purpose of teaching students the fundamentals necessary to succeed and thrive." 

Trump signed a flurry of executive orders targeting federal funding for schools as testing scores continue to drop, according to the Nation's Report Card.

Trump administration officials are reportedly weighing a plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Tuesday.

Fox News' Rachel del Guidice contributed to this article.

Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is calling out the national security risk of having a generation dependent on China as U.S. students fall behind in the classroom. 

"75% of eighth graders are not math proficient according to international standards," Ramaswamy told "The Ingraham Angle" on Thursday. "We're number 26 out of 38 developed countries. There are kids in other countries where English is not even their first language, out-beating our own students on English proficiency and I just think, speaking as an American and as a parent myself, that's unacceptable." 

According to recent studies, reading comprehension scores are hitting all-time lows in the U.S., with only 31% of fourth graders reading at grade level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Now, President Donald Trump is attempting to turn around these statistics by supporting school choice and getting rid of CRT and gender ideology in the classroom. 

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The former presidential candidate told Fox News that states must lead the way in improving education by allowing merit-based pay for teachers, giving families school choice and by encouraging students in American virtue. 

"Lighting a fire under the feet of our educational culture, not teaching our kids to be victims, but to be victors, rewarding excellence instead of victimhood. I think it's a cultural change we need in our educational system, too, and if we don't fix it, China is going to be eating our lunch if they already aren't," he said.

Ramaswamy explained the importance of returning to a "true American system" of education, with fewer participation trophies and competition in various academic fields. 

"This is a national security risk to the future of the United States if we have an entire generation that is dependent on China," he said. "It's unacceptable and yes, the woke left is responsible for a lot of this ...but it goes beyond that to where we got to just light that fire under the feet of a generation and teach them that achievement is actually worth working for."

"Hard work is an American virtue, and that doesn't start in college," he continued. "It doesn't even start in high school. It starts young and so, President Trump is leading the way with that culture, but it's going to take the states to really lift us up."

Anti-Israel protesters say they spray-painted the front of a Columbia University building and "cemented" the sewage lines of another building to mark the one-year anniversary of a Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli forces in 2024.

Three groups, in a joint post, uploaded a video to social media on Wednesday showing evidence of their defacement, while Columbia University says it is working with law enforcement to investigate the incident, which included "disturbing, personal attacks."

The video shows the front of the Henry R. Kravis Hall building at the university’s Business School in Manhattan being doused and then covered with red spray paint.

MASKED ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY DEMONSTRATE AS STUDENTS CHECK IN FOR FIRST DAY OF CLASSES

The walls of the women’s restroom at the university’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) building were also spray-painted with an image of Hind Rajab, the 6-year-old who died during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

The protesters also sprayed the words "Keren eat Weiner" with a drawing of feces. The message relates to Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for intelligence, who also serves as an SIPA adjunct professor.

The protesters also claimed to have clogged the toilets with cement.

"One year ago, the world failed Hind. But today and every day we owe Hind, all our martyrs, and ourselves, action," the defiant post reads. "So today we acted. Inspired by Hind, and the bravery of every Palestinian child who has faced down Israeli genocide for the last century - whether they threw a Molotov at a checkpoint, a rock at a tank, or made a call for help. So long as they resist, so must we."

The women’s restrooms on the fourth, sixth, 14th, and 15th floors of the SIPA building were "vandalized with a cement-like substance causing the toilets to clog," according to an internal email by the university, cited by the Columbia Spectator. 

COLUMBIA STUDENTS CONFRONT ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS WHO STORMED CLASSROOM WITH ANTISEMITIC FLYERS

In the video, a gray watery substance is seen in a toilet.

"Early this morning, Columbia Business School’s main entrance was sprayed with red paint in an act of vandalism," the university said in a statement. "Vandalism of a University building in an attempt to disrupt our academic mission and intimidate or harass our community will not be tolerated. We will provide updates as they become available."

The three anti-Israel groups — the Palestine Solidarity Working Group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and @nycresistswithgaza — bragged about the vandalism and wrote that they targeted the Henry R. Kravis Hall building because they say it is "one of Columbia's most recent violent gentrification projects into Harlem."

"The construction of which was conditioned on the creation of Columbia's Apartheid Global Center in ‘Tel Aviv.’ We will not allow this land-grab to go unchallenged."

They said that the SIPA building was targeted because it was the first Columbia institution to expel a student for their support for "Palestinian liberation," which is run by Keren. 

When a mob of anti-Israel protesters stormed the iconic Hamilton Hall academic building at the university in April during the campus protests, they rebranded it "Hind’s Hall," after Rajab. The group unfurled a banner with "Hind’s Hall" emblazoned on it and at the time they described her as a "Gazan Martyr."

Rajab was killed as she and her family were fleeing Gaza City when their vehicle was shelled.

The attack killed her uncle, aunt and three cousins, with Rajab and another cousin surviving. She contacted the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) to ask for help while noting that they were being attacked by an Israeli tank. 

And then there was a burst of gunfire. She screamed and fell silent. But after the organization sent an ambulance, it lost contact with the crew.

Twelve days later, the ambulance was discovered, blackened and destroyed. The two medics were dead and Rajab. Her cousin also died. 

The Palestinian Red Crescent accused Israeli forces of targeting the ambulance as it pulled up near the family’s vehicle. The organization said it had coordinated the journey with Israeli forces as in the past.

Wednesday's incident came on the same day President Donald Trump ordered a law enforcement crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses, including removing pro-Hamas activists with student visas from the country,

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

A Nashville-area school district voted this week to remove a transgender book for children from its school libraries after questions were raised about the book's content at last month's board meeting.

During the public comment section at the December 10 Murfreesboro City School Board meeting, pastor and activist John K. Amanchukwu called out the district for having the picture book, "It Feels Good to Be Yourself," on the shelves at Bradley Academy, an elementary school serving pre-K through 6th grade students in the district.

The book introduces the concept of gender identity to readers as young as four, according to its description. 

"Some people are boys. Some people are girls. Some people are both, neither, or somewhere in between," it says.

MINNESOTA SCHOOL DISTRICT REMOVES LGBTQ CHILDREN'S BOOK WITH NUDITY, DESPITE OBJECTIONS

The book tells the story of "Ruthie," a transgender girl, and introduces terms like "cisgender" and "nonbinary" to explain different gender identities to younger readers.

After Amanchukwu started to read from the book, board chair Butch Campbell objected to the pastor bringing up the book at the meeting, saying he was going against the rules of only bringing up agenda items during the public comment section.

The pastor continued to read from inside the book, calling the book's message about there being more than two genders "a lie" and citing the Book of Genesis.

After about two minutes of the board attempting to get Amanchukwu to stop speaking, they forced the meeting into a recess.

At the January 14 school board meeting this week, the board announced the transgender-themed book had been reviewed by a committee of staff and parents, who recommended removing the book. 

One board member said the book had been on the shelves since 2022 and had never been checked out.

Before they conducted a vote, vice-chair Amanda Moore accused Amanchukwu of conducting a "show" to bring the book to the district's attention.

Amanchukwu is a contributor for Turning Point USA and travels around the country to different school board meetings to draw attention to explicit books in school libraries.

"This person had advertised his visit to us for weeks before he came. Never contacted the school, never contacted central office and never contacted this board, even though he came and yelled at us about this dangerous book we had on the shelf," vice chair Amanda Moore said before the board voted to remove the book from library shelves.

PARENTS AND TEACHERS BATTLE IN MARYLAND COUNTY OVER ‘SEXUALLY EXPLICIT’ BOOKS IN SCHOOL

Amanchukwu responded to the board's decision and comments in a statement to Fox News Digital.

"If my commitment to protecting children from content that mentally rapes them is a 'show'....I  pray that this ‘show’ gets bigger for the sake of the least of these, in 2025," Amanchukwu said.

He quoted Proverbs 22:6, which says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

"We are called to train children up, not mess them up," his statement continued. "I salute the board members for using common sense in governing the pedagogy of students in Murfreesboro City Schools." 

This month, a school district in Minnesota removed a transgender book from an elementary school library after facing pressure from a concerned parent.

Rochester Public Schools said it pulled the 2022 book, "The Rainbow Parade" by Emily Neilson, from its elementary school media center last month after a Franklin Elementary School parent raised concerns about nude illustrations in the book.