In a year so far characterized by massive federal funding and staff cuts, education data groups breathed a sigh of relief this summer when the Department of Education announced it was moving forward with the process of collecting civil rights data from K-12 schools.
Researchers, advocates and educators protested when the department delayed sending surveys for the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) to school districts in February, citing a need for revisions to its questions for “consistency with the federal civil rights laws.” The delay was part of Trump administration shake-ups that included $881 million in cuts to education research contracts.
While the government shutdown in early October will almost certainly slow the process, the department announced it would finalize the data for the 2025-26 school year and prepare data collection for the 2027-28 school year. The most recently available CRDC data is from the 2021-22 school year and was released in January.
Tabbye Chavous, executive director of the American Educational Research Association, says the CRDC is the only source of nationwide data “on how students are faring across race, gender, disability, and other key factors.”
“Schools use these data to identify gaps and develop solutions, researchers to track equity outcomes and uncover patterns over time, and families to advocate for their children,” Chavous told EdSurge in a statement. “All rely on the CRDC to support student access and participation and to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and practices for all students. Any delay in implementation would leave schools and communities in the dark, making it harder to spot disparities and act on them.”
The American Educational Research Association noted the updated version removes the nonbinary gender category that had been added in 2021, bringing the survey into alignment with a January executive order declaring that the federal government recognizes only two genders.
The National Center for Youth Law decried the department’s decision to stop tracking the outcomes of nonbinary students, saying in public comments about the forthcoming CRDC that it will make it harder to monitor their experiences of bullying or discrimination.
“We believe these data are valuable and believe that the removal of the collection of data on non-binary youth will likely increase these students’ exposure to bigotry,” the organization wrote.
It’s not just the CRDC that has been affected by cuts.
The Department of Education announced plans last month to stop collecting state-level data that identifies school districts where students with disabilities or from certain racial groups are disproportionately disciplined or removed from the classroom. Critics of the move say it will hurt advocates’ ability to monitor where students of color are facing unfairly harsh or exclusionary discipline.
The Trump administration is, however, keen to centralize data that could reveal how colleges use race and sex as factors in admissions decisions — perhaps no easy feat now that it has shorn the ranks of education data staffers down to a skeleton crew.