Office for Civil Rights move raises questions about data release
The Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection, a long-running survey that has tracked how students are treated in every public school in the United States for more than 50 years, was scheduled for release last December. Six months later, the data has not been published. The department has not responded to multiple requests from NPR seeking an explanation.
The CRDC covers issues including bullying, harassment, access to Advanced Placement courses, and internet connectivity. Researchers, policymakers, and lawmakers use the data to identify disparities and shape civil rights protections. Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas used previous CRDC findings to craft a bill expanding access to AP courses for underrepresented students, including minority and disabled students. A spokesperson for Booker’s team said the bill would be reintroduced in the coming days.
The delay comes as the Trump administration has been winding down operations at the Education Department. The agency has cut about half its staff since the administration took office. A 2025 government shutdown halted operations for more than six weeks, including work on the CRDC, according to a former Education Department employee who worked on the data collection. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of professional repercussions.
The administration also plans to transfer the Office for Civil Rights, which houses the CRDC team, from the Education Department to the Justice Department. The former employee said the CRDC team is still intact, but its future is unclear. The transfer process could take months.
Denise Forte, president and CEO of EdTrust, a think tank focused on education equity, said the delay “raises serious concerns, particularly as this administration seeks to downplay the impacts of racism and economic inequality in public education.” Forte said the administration “has repeatedly applied civil rights law in ways that ignore or dismiss the very real inequities that persist in our education system.”
Lindsay Kubatzky, director of policy and advocacy at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said the delay fits a pattern of the administration working to undo federal civil rights accountability tools. He pointed to the administration’s proposal to eliminate a requirement for states to track which students are identified as having disabilities by race and ethnicity, noting that Black and brown students are historically more often wrongly identified for special education. While that data is not part of the CRDC, Kubatzky said the CRDC plays a key role in showing where “schools are not serving students” and provides “a lever to push for policies that are more inclusive and less negative toward students.”
The former employee said the delayed dataset would have addressed whether schools are ready to usher in artificial-intelligence tools and whether all students will have equal access to devices and internet. “We can’t make the right decisions for students if we don’t have insight into their current realities,” the person said.