February 2022
On February 11, AERA submitted comments to the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on proposed revisions to the 2021–22 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The CRDC is a mandatory collection that includes data indicators on equity in educational access. A summary of the most notable proposed changes to the 2021–22 CRDC is available in a November 2021 press release from the U.S. Department of Education.
OCR proposed several revisions to the CRDC, including the restoration of several data indicators that were removed from the 2020–21 CRDC on teacher absenteeism, the number of first- and second-year teachers, and the number of teachers employed during the previous and current school years. The comments from AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine included thanks to OCR for restoring these indicators, particularly with ongoing reports of shortages within the education workforce.
The comments also included support for several proposed new data indicators, including data on access to WiFi-enabled devices and hotspots, data science course offerings and enrollment in grades 9-12, and data on nonbinary gender identity, which would be disaggregated in future CRDC administration in areas such as bullying and harassment.
“While research has indicated that LGBTQ students have experienced greater rates of victimization than their non-LGBTQ peers, further collection of these data points will importantly help in guiding OCR responses and school and district compliance with Title IX,” Levine wrote.
The 2020-21 CRDC did not include data indicators on school finance that had been on previous iterations of the CRDC. The 2021-22 would continue to leave out data indicators on school finance, with the goal of making the National Center for Education Statistics School-Level Finance Survey a mandatory collection.
“As the Department of Education continues to implement the Foundations of Evidence-based Policymaking Act, we see promise in the potential linkages of data from the School-Level Finance Survey to the CRDC for research purposes,” Levine wrote.
The 2021-22 CRDC will be the first administration of the CRDC done in two consecutive years. AERA continues to seek ways for the CRDC to be an annual collection.
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