Appendix A.3. Office for Civil Rights

Civil Rights Data Collection

The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has surveyed the nation's public elementary and secondary schools since 1968. The survey was first known as the OCR Elementary and Secondary School (E&S) Survey; in 2004, it was renamed the Civil Rights Data Collection. The survey provides information about the enrollment of students in public schools in every state and about some education services provided to those students. These data are reported by race/ethnicity, sex, and disability.

Data in the survey are collected pursuant to 34 C.F.R. Section 100.6(b) of the Department of Education regulation implementing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The requirements are also incorporated by reference in Department regulations implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975. School, district, state, and national data are currently available. Data from individual public schools and districts are used to generate projected national and state data.

In recent surveys, the sample has been approximately 6,000 districts and 60,000 schools; however, in 2000, data were collected from all public school districts. In sample surveys, the following districts are sampled with certainty: districts having more than 25,000 students; all districts in states having 25 or fewer public school districts; and districts subject to federal court order and monitored by the U.S. Department of Justice. The survey is conducted biennially (with few exceptions). Data currently are available from the 2006 survey.

Data marked with an exclamation point (!) have a nonresponse rate of more than 30 percent. Numbers should be used with caution due to large statistical uncertainty in the estimate. The methodology for flagging "large statistical uncertainties" is based on a standard error for each projected item.

Further information on the Civil Rights Data Collection can be obtained from

Mary Schifferli
Office for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Education
550 12th Street SW
Washington, DC 20202
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/data.html