Introduction

The federal government collects information on race and ethnicity for a variety of purposes, including monitoring job discrimination and school segregation. Federal agencies make use of the data they collect on race and ethnicity for planning, program monitoring, enforcement, and analyses. While the Census Bureau has included a question on race in each census since 1790, the content and format of the question and the method of data collection have changed over the years.

In 1974, the federal government created an Ad Hoc Committee on Racial and Ethnic Definitions. The committee was charged with developing specific terms and definitions for designating race and ethnicity so that a broad range of data could be collected by federal agencies on a comparable and nonduplicative basis. In 1977, the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued "Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting," which were contained in Statistical Policy Directive Number 15 (Executive Office of the President). For the first time, standard categories and definitions were to be used by all federal agencies in both collecting and presenting data on racial and ethnic populations. Directive 15 established four discrete categories for collecting data on race-American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander; black, and white-and categories for sorting ethnicity into "Hispanic origin," and "not of Hispanic origin." These categories may be combined into a simple list of five racial and ethnic classifications: American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian or Pacific Islander; Black, not of Hispanic origin; Hispanic; and White, not of Hispanic origin. These categories were developed largely to produce data on population groups that historically have suffered discrimination and differential treatment in the United States because of their race or ethnicity (Evinger, 1995).

The standard federal categories for data on race and ethnicity have been used for more than 20 years. During that time, the country's population has become considerably more diverse, both racially and ethnically. In fact, during the 1980s, immigration to the United States reached historic levels, and since the 1965 Immigration Act, the flows have come primarily from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Asia rather than Europe and Canada (Harrison and Bennett, 1995). Also, while the proportion of interracial marriages is still relatively small (about 2 percent of all marriages in the United States), the numbers of such unions have been increasing and have resulted in a large increase in the population of individuals of mixed race or ethnicity (Evinger, 1995). These demographic changes raised concerns on the part of data collectors and respondents themselves that the standard federal categories adopted in 1977 no longer reflect the diversity of the nation's population.

In July 1993, OMB announced that it would undertake a comprehensive review of the current categories, including an analysis of the possible effects of suggested changes to the categories on the quality and utility of the resulting data. An integral and essential part of OMB's review has been research and testing conducted by a number of federal agencies on alternative approaches to collecting data on race and ethnicity. The review activities have included a series of four congressional hearings in 1993 on the measurement of race and ethnicity in the decennial census (U.S. House, 1994); a workshop in 1994, organized by the National Academy of Sciences and attended by representatives of federal agencies, academia, social science research, interest groups, private industry, and local school districts; an interagency committee chaired by OMB; research activities by the Census Bureau (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1996; 1997), the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the National Center for Health Statistics on individual identification of race and ethnicity; and research by the Department of Education on how information on race and ethnicity is collected in administrative record data (e.g., schools).This last aspect of the research effort began with a 1995 survey of public schools designed to provide information on the collection of racial and ethnic data by schools and to identify any problems they were experiencing in recording and reporting these data using the five standard federal categories (U.S. Department of Education, 1996). As revealed by the findings from the School Survey on Racial and Ethnic Classifications:

• Seventy-three percent of schools reported using only the five standard federal classifications.


• Although 41 percent of schools reported that there were students for whom the 5 standard federal categories are not accurate, most schools reported that less than 5 percent of their students were affected.


• Most respondents (69 percent) reported that adding a "multiracial category" was not an issue or was a minor issue in terms of applicability to students enrolled in their schools.

The survey described in this report is also part of this research agenda. The data collected from this survey were intended to provide OMB with information on the collection of racial and ethnic data from administrative records by state departments of education for their own and federal reporting purposes. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education commissioned the study. Data on the following issues were collected from 49 states (Hawaii did not take part in the survey) and the District of Columbia. The results were shared with OMB and the interagency committee:

• The use of any classifications that differ from the five standard federal categories, and how these additional categories are reported to the federal government;


• The impetus within states for making changes to the five standard federal categories;


• Whether or not state departments of education have received complaints about the current system of data collection and the nature of these complaints; and


• The effect that changes in collecting race and ethnicity information have had, or that changes in state or federal laws would have, on the cost and time required to collect this information and on the maintenance and reporting of trend data.

In October 1997, OMB released new categories for collecting data on race and ethnicity (Federal Register, October 1997, 62FR58782-89). The data from this report were supplied to OMB during its decision making process. To designate race, the new categories are White; Black or African American; Asian; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and American Indian or Alaska Native. To designate ethnicity, the categories are Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino. While OMB did not add a "multiracial" category, individuals are allowed to report one or more races when they selfidentify. These new categories were used by the Census Bureau in the 2000 Census Dress Rehearsal conducted in spring 1998 and will be used in the 2000 Census. Other federal programs are encouraged to adopt the standards as soon as possible, but no later than January 1, 2003.

This report presents the findings from the State Survey on Racial and Ethnic Classifications conducted for NCES by Westat, Inc., a research firm in Rockville, Maryland. The survey was conducted through the NCES Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) during February 1997. FRSS is a survey system designed to collect small amounts of data with minimal burden placed on respondents and within a relatively short timeframe. Telephone interviews were to be conducted with representatives from the departments of education in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, but the representative from Hawaii was unavailable for interview. Throughout this report, therefore, information is presented on the 49 responding states and the District of Columbia. For reporting purposes, the District of Columbia is counted as a state in the tables and discussion of this report. Details of the survey methodology are presented in appendix A, and copies of the telephone protocols used for the interviews are included as appendix B.

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