The Impact of Federal Civil Rights Investigations on Racial Disparities (Poster 32)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Despite decades of literature highlighting racial disparities in exclusionary discipline and a flurry of recent policy efforts aimed at narrowing gaps, racial disparities in discipline remain. One understudied policy mechanism that aims to reduce racial disparities is the use of federal enforcement of anti- discrimination laws through the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In this paper, I leverage a new dataset with information on all OCR civil rights investigations related to racial discrimination in school discipline initiated between 1999 and 2019 to study the impact of this type of civil rights oversight on discipline rates and test scores. Using an event study design with a doubly robust estimation approach, I compare changes in outcomes among students in districts where OCR initiated an investigation to those in comparison districts that have either not yet been investigated or will not be investigated during the study time frame. All in all, I do not find evidence that the initiation of a civil rights investigation by OCR leads to meaningful reductions in discipline rates. Findings also indicate that OCR investigations do not impact average test scores. My results thus provide causal evidence indicating that modern civil rights oversight of this form may be an ineffective approach to improve racial equality in schools.

Author

• Rachel M. Perera, The Brookings Institution