Civil Rights Data Collection and National Center for Education Statistics Administrative Data on English Language Learners

• In Event: Informing Public Scholarship on Multilingual and English Language Learners: Understanding Federal Education Policies and Data

Abstract

The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) is a biennial (i.e., every other school year) survey required by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Since 1968, the CRDC has collected data on key education and civil rights issues in U.S. public schools for use by OCR in its enforcement and monitoring efforts regarding equal educational opportunity. The CRDC is also a tool for other offices within the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies, policymakers and researchers, educators and school officials, and the public to analyze student equity and opportunity. The CRDC provides data for every public school disaggregated by race/ethnicity, English language learner (ELL) status, sex, and disability Data for all schools now disaggregated by seven race and ethnicity categories, including Native-Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and multiracial students

The presenter will start with a short discussion providing background information on the CRDC and brief overview of other administrative data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) from school districts and state departments of education. Following this, the speaker will discuss the CRDC and other NCES administrative data collected on English language learners. Included in this discussion, the panelist will discuss a recent redesign of the CRDC submission system in 2013-14 and how school districts have been supported to assure data quality in this mandatory collection, and the enhancements added to the 2015-16 CRDC, such as clarifications and modifications to existing data elements. The CRDC provides online access to the data by subgroup including by ELL status. After a brief demonstration on how to access the online tool, the presenter will share data on ELLs from the CRDC and other NCES administrative data collections.

Author

• Joel McFarland, National Center for Education Statistics