Key Changes Would Alter The Government's Massive Survey On Schools And Civil Rights
The Department of Education has proposed several key changes to its massive survey that collects data from the nation's public schools on a wide range of civil rights issues.
Among the changes, the 2019-2020 version of the Civil Rights Data Collection would remove questions that focus on preschool and school finance. The proposals would also add in more questions about sexual assault and bullying based on religion.
The CRDC, as it's known, is a massive trove of self-reported information published every two years by the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. The data collected is used by the Department, education researchers, policymakers and scholars from many fields. Every public school in the country is required to participate, and the government gets data from nearly all of them: more than 96,000 in 2015-16, from around 17,000 school districts.
The proposals for the upcoming survey, which will gather data from this school year, are still under review. The public comment period ends Nov. 18, and the department said the earliest that these proposals could go into effect is 2020.
Here are some of the proposed changes.
What's being added
While the CRDC previously compiled information about the number of sexual assaults reported at schools, it didn't distinguish whether those incidents were committed by students or school staff. In addition to collecting that information, the new survey CONTINUE READING: Education Department Proposes Key Changes To Civil Rights Data Collection : NPR
