Education Week - November 27, 2019 - 8

Clashing Views
On Civil Rights
Data Proposal
By Evie Blad
Proposed changes to the massive
trove of civil rights data the U.S.
Department of Education collects
from every public school in the
country-including the addition of
information on religous-based bullying and elimination of other data
points-has drawn organized praise
from advocates concerned about
anti-Semitism in schools.
But t he proposa ls have a lso
prompted concern from other civil
rights groups and policymakers who
believe some changes being sought
by Secretary of Education Betsy
DeVos' team will make it harder to
weed out disparities.
In public comments that closed
last week, school administrators
from around the country also said
the process of submitting the mandatory data every two years remains
cumbersome, and they cautioned
that some proposed new data would

be difficult to collect under their current systems and processes.
The federal data-used by researchers, educators, advocacy
groups, and lawmakers-provide
the most comprehensive view available of issues like access to advanced

* Ending the breakdown of preschool-enrollment data by race.
* Reducing the types of data collected on preschool suspensions.
* Adding new data points about allegations or incidents of "rape or attempted rape" by school staff.
* Ending collection of data on firstand second-year teachers and data
on teachers who are absent 10 days
or more in a school year.
* Limiting data collected on advanced coursework, like Advanced
Placement, and credit-recovery programs.
* Eliminating several data points
about school-level spending.
A few general themes emerged

Semitism in schools and its effects
on the lives of Jewish students. A
majority of those comments were a
variation on a template that appears
to come from an action alert sent by
Stand With Us, a Jewish advocacy
group.
"This change is critical so that
government agencies can better respond to incidents of bullying and
harassment, especially where ethnic and/or ancestral harassment is
combined with direct religious discrimination," those comments said.
Assistant Secretar y for Civil
Rights Kenneth L. Marcus previously served as the president of the
Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human

There are still many data points that we question
the value of continuing and the authority
of [the Education Department] to collect.
AASA, the School Superintendents Association

coursework, discipline, levels of
student-support staff, and racial disparities in those areas.
Proposed changes to the Civil
Rights Data Collection include:
* Breaking down incidents of bullying based on religion.

from the 601 public comments about
the proposed changes.
A majorit y of the comments
praised plans to disaggregate incidents of religious-based bullying,
all from commenters who said they
were concerned about a rise of anti-

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Rights Under Law, which advances
civil and human rights for Jewish
people. That issue is one of concern
for the Education Department.
The federal survey previously
asked about harassment on the basis
of religion in general, but it did not
ask schools to break that information
down by specific religious groups.
Some commenters expressed concern about how schools would carry
out the mandate.
The Anti-Defamation League, for
example, wrote that it was "concerned that a new emphasis on
religion-based harassment could be
used as a pretext to report conduct
meant to protect the diverse student populations in America's classrooms."
"For example, individuals could
report activities designed to promote understanding and inclusiveness toward lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and questioning or
queer (LGBTQ) students, parents,
or teachers as harassment, claiming that these activities offend their
religious beliefs," the organization
wrote.
And the American Atheists organization wrote: "Bullying targeted
at atheists and religious minorities
is less likely to be understood, reported, and identified than bullying targeting religious majorities,
because most Americans are less
familiar with minority religions."

'Vital Information'
Civil rights groups, researchers,
state officials, and congressional
Democrats voiced particular concern about the proposal to eliminate
data on early education and school
spending.
"This proposal will undermine the
bipartisan will of Congress to report
vital information to parents and to
the public," Democrats on the House
Education Committee wrote.
The preschool data proposed for
elimination helped expose racial
inequities in areas like discipline

that have "spurred significant policy
change across the country, including
in California," wrote California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
"Limiting disciplinary data collected will impede policymakers'
ability to address disciplinary disparities in early-childhood education," he said.
The data have been crucial in addressing and exposing "a preschool
suspension crisis," wrote the Dignity
in Schools Campaign, a coalition of
civil rights and student groups.
The group also flagged concerns
about reducing data on teacher experience and school spending.
"This action would be devastating, given that the CRDC is the only
data source that shows school-level
expenditures across the country,"
Dignity in Schools said.
The Education Department justified the biggest proposed change-
the elimination of school-level
spending data-by arguing that the
federal Every Student Succeeds Act
requires similar or identical data
to be collected at the state level.
Some commenters said the statelevel data would be an adequate
substitute, or even an improvement. But others said removing
those questions would eliminate
a consistent national source of
infor mat ion t hat wou ld allow
for large-scale comparisons and
analyses.
Other commenters concerned
about the reduction in civil rights
data included: the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund, the
National PTA, the Center for Civil
Rights Remedies at UCLA's Civil
Rights Project, the National Urban
League, the Southern Education
Foundation, and the National Council on Teacher Quality, which said it
was concerned about the elimination of data on novice teachers and
teacher absences.
Some commenters, including
Becerra, also suggested that questions about teacher rape should include a wider scope of problematic
behaviors, including sexual assault
and harassment.

A Logistical Headache?
A signif icant portion of commenters lamented the amount of
time their districts spend collecting
the data and the logistical hurdles
they face in reporting it accurately.
AASA, the School Superintendents
Association, praised the proposed
eliminations, noting that civil rights
data collection "places a real burden
on school districts."
"Nationally, it takes district staff
close to 1.5 million hours of time
to collect and submit this data, resulting in a cost of approximately
$66 million that is diverted toward a federal data-collection mandate," AASA wrote. "We sincerely
appreciate [the DeVos team's] decision to decrease the burden of total
responses by a [local education
agency] by 21.8 percent, yet there are
still many data points that we question the value of continuing and the
authority of [the Education Department] to collect this data."

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Education Week - November 27, 2019

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