The secretary also touts record high-school graduation rates, a reduction in what the administration dubbed “dropout factories,” and the expansion of technology (as a tool for creating individualized learning plans) in classrooms. He lauds the fact that it has become easier to apply for federal financial aid to pay for college, and the development of a college “scorecard” to help students evaluate which colleges might be a good fit.

King devotes significant space to the hard-fought Every Student Succeeds Act, a rewrite of the nation’s main federal education law and a rare bipartisan effort. Predictably, the secretary sidesteps acknowledging that some elements of the law that the administration would like to see cemented, such as a rule that federal and state money slated to educate poor students should be added to local funding instead of replacing it, could actually be scaled back or rescinded during Donald Trump’s presidency. (Trump’s name does not appear in the memo.)

Instead, King focuses on what he sees as the law’s civil-rights focus, writing:

Importantly, ESSA reinforces the civil rights protections of the original 1965 law. It has a strong focus on underserved students—such as students of color, students from low-income families, Native-American students, English learners, students with disabilities, foster youth, homeless students, and migrant and seasonal farmworker children—so all students receive a quality education that prepares them for college and careers.

Civil-rights groups have expressed fear that a Trump administration will not see protecting and promoting the equal treatment of minorities (racial, religious, and otherwise) as a priority, and King’s decision to focus on the topic serves as a something of a message that Democrats do not think the new law can be successfully implemented if what they view as the civil rights of some students are ignored. (While the Obama administration has voiced support for LGBT students, for instance, civil-rights groups have expressed concern that Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, belongs to a family that has backed anti-LGBT causes.)

The section on ESSA is not the only space where King devotes time to civil rights, which the administration and he in particular have called a priority. Officials in both the White House and Education Department have frequently framed education broadly as a civil-rights issue. King notes in the memo that the department’s Office of Civil Rights has responded to more than 75,000 complaints and reached agreements with more than 5,000 schools and programs. He praises the administration’s “efforts to improve the usefulness and transparency of data,” and the use of that data to create “an understandable, graphical picture of our challenges in education.”

At other points in the memo, King praises what he sees as the department’s prioritization of evidence-based research (“Eight years ago,” he writes, “federal grants were rarely awarded based on evidence of their likelihood to succeed”), and its work to support teachers. The latter will surely draw some pushback from teachers’ unions, who saw the administration as too test-happy (and too willing to tie teacher evaluations to tests).