Federal Civil Rights Data on Schools Now 6 Months Overdue
The U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) — a biennial survey that tracks how students are treated in every public school across America — is now six months behind schedule, raising alarm among civil rights advocates and education researchers about the erosion of federal oversight of educational equity.
The data, which covers the 2023-24 school year, was supposed to be published by December 2025 according to the Education Department’s own deadline. As of July 2, 2026, the department has not released it and has not responded to multiple inquiries from NPR asking what is behind the delay.
What Is the CRDC?
Since 1968, the CRDC has collected data from every public school district in the country on issues including student enrollment by race and ethnicity, access to advanced courses, bullying and harassment, school discipline, internet access, and teacher qualifications. The data is disaggregated by race, sex, disability status, and English learner status, making it one of the most powerful tools for identifying and addressing systemic disparities in American education.
Why the Delay Matters
The delay comes amid a broader restructuring of the Education Department under the Trump administration. The department has cut about half its overall staff, from 4,133 to approximately 2,183 employees. The 2025 government shutdown, which lasted 43 days — the longest in U.S. history — further disrupted operations, including work on the CRDC.
Additionally, the Trump administration announced on June 16, 2026, plans to move the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) — which houses the CRDC team — from the Education Department to the Department of Justice. The future of the CRDC team remains uncertain.
“This administration has repeatedly applied civil rights law in ways that ignore or dismiss the very real inequities that persist in our education system,” said Denise Forte, president and CEO of EdTrust, a think tank focused on addressing education inequity. “The delay in releasing the CRDC data raises serious concerns, particularly as this administration seeks to downplay the impacts of racism and economic inequality in public education.”
Impact on Students with Disabilities
Lindsay Kubatzky, director of policy and advocacy at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said the delay is part of a pattern. “This administration unfortunately has proposed a lot of policies that would make it less transparent on how students with disabilities in particular are being served in public schools,” Kubatzky said.
For example, the Trump administration has proposed eliminating a requirement for states to track which students are being identified as having disabilities based on race and ethnicity — a critical safeguard given that Black and brown students are historically more often wrongly identified as needing special education.
A Tool for Policy Change
The CRDC has been used to craft federal legislation. Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas used CRDC findings to develop a bill proposing expanded access to Advanced Placement courses for underrepresented students, including minority and disabled students. A spokesperson for Booker’s team said the bill would be reintroduced in the coming days.
One of the questions the delayed dataset was set to answer is which students have access to the internet as artificial intelligence plays a growing role in education, according to a former CRDC staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We can’t make the right decisions for students if we don’t have insight into their current realities,” the former staffer said.
Broader Concerns About Civil Rights Enforcement
Catherine E. Lhamon, who served as assistant secretary for OCR under Presidents Obama and Biden, described the planned move of OCR to the Justice Department as “a terrible idea,” arguing that Justice has “no interest and no expertise in doing the kind of work that OCR does.”
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) and 10 other leading education research groups sent a letter in July 2025 urging the Education Department to finalize the CRDC for the 2025-26 school year, warning that the timeline had “no more flexibility.”
What’s Next
The CRDC has operated continuously since 1968, spanning multiple administrations of both parties. The current delay represents one of the most significant disruptions to federal education civil rights data collection in its 58-year history. Even if the administration takes immediate action, the Paperwork Reduction Act requires a 30-day public comment period and OMB review, meaning approval could not come before September 2026 at the earliest.
Advocates and researchers are left with pressing questions: Will the 2023-24 data ever be released? Will the 2025-26 collection proceed at all? And how will policymakers and the public fill the gap if one of the nation’s most important tools for measuring educational equity is effectively discontinued?