Is the Historic Role of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in Jeopardy or Simply Undergoing an Expected Shift? Education Law Prof Blog

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Is the Historic Role of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in Jeopardy or Simply Undergoing an Expected Shift?

James Murphy's new article in the Atlantic offers a excellent and compelling overview of the Office for Civil Rights.  He details the various people who have headed the Office over the last fifty years and the major policies they have pursued.  He also contrasts the policies of the administrations that have transitioned into and out of the office.  With this backdrop, he suggests that major changes from the new administration are the norm for this Office.  How far those changes will or will not go, however, is not yet clear.

Under DeVos, the guidance on sexual violence will almost certainly be modified, if not withdrawn, as will the transgender guidance law. So, too, might the guidance on discipline, seclusion, and restraint, in particular. Seclusion (removing a student from a classroom and putting her in isolation) and restraint (restricting a student’s movement, often by pinning him to the floor) have been used disproportionately against students with disabilities and African American students. President Trump’s rhetoric about “American carnage” and “bad dudes” suggests he is more likely to embrace the “zero-tolerance” policies.

The time and effort it takes to resolve many of the thousands of complaints the OCR receives each year help explain why the office pursued a more assertive (or, depending on the perspective, aggressive) policy on guidance in the past eight years. The fastest way to resolve a complaint is to prevent its ever having been made, which is why the department said it placed so much emphasis on making its guidance and data more usable, available, and visible.

Justice is slow, childhood is fleeting, and the task of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is to make those schedules match. Information and transparency are key to attaining that goal. In addition to making its resolutions part of the public record so other school leaders could learn from them and increasing its outreach to schools through technical assistance (through, for example, workshops, flyers, and community meetings), the OCR under Obama made the data it is required to collect about civil rights in primary and secondary schools more easily accessible, comprehensive, and public-facing. Now, state and local governments, schools, community organizations, journalists, and citizens could use them. The OCR has used it biennial CRDC reports to highlight disparities in such areas as discipline, college and career readiness, and absenteeism.

Repeatedly in interviews, civil-rights stakeholders expressed their support of the OCR’s decision to make Education Law Prof Blog: