Proposed Changes to Civil Rights Data Collection Draws Support and Opposition
November 26, 2019
Proposed changes by the Department of Education (DOE) to the “massive trove of civil rights data” the agency collects from every public school in the country are being lauded by “advocates concerned about anti-Semitism in schools” while also prompting “concern from other civil rights groups and policymakers” who believe the changes “will make it harder to weed out disparities.” In public comments, school administrators also noted the difficulty in submitting mandatory data as well as collecting some of the new proposed data under current processes. To justify the biggest proposed change—eliminating school-level spending data—the DOE argues that the Every Student Succeed Act already requires similar or identical data to be collected at the state level.