NCES and Department of Education Office of Civil Rights to Partner on Civil Rights Data Collection
NCES and Department of Education Office of Civil Rights to Partner on Civil Rights Data Collection
 
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August 2019

On August 23, the Department of Education announced that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) would work with the department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to improve the quality of data in the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC).

According to the Education Department’s news release, “The partnership between OCR and NCES will help to ensure that the CRDC data is valid, reliable and authenticated in a manner that provides a more accurate picture of key civil rights issues in education.”

The CRDC includes information from school districts on leading civil rights indicators related to access and barriers to educational opportunity for P–12 students. The CRDC provides data on educational equity, including access to courses and school discipline indicators.

Under this collaboration, NCES and OCR will support school districts by providing resources for technical assistance to support states and districts in submitting accurate information to the Department of Education. In addition, the two agencies will work to increase data reliability and validity to provide more accurate data on educational equity and opportunity.

"OCR has worked to continuously improve CRDC data quality—and has taken unprecedented steps to ensure school districts report accurate data to the Department," said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. "This agreement between OCR and NCES is one additional step to make sure that we are doing everything we can to help states and school districts provide correct CRDC data that can be relied on by the public, parents and families."