A Promise Unfulfilled?: How Federal Civil Rights Enforcement Addresses Racial Discrimination in School Discipline

• In Event: Enforcing Equity in PK-12 Schools: An In-Depth Examination of the Office for Civil Rights

Abstract

Despite decades of literature highlighting stark racial disparities in exclusionary discipline and a flurry of recent policy efforts aimed at narrowing gaps, racial disparities in discipline remain. Researchers hypothesize that prior approaches have been ineffective in narrowing gaps because of an inattention to the role of racism and discrimination in the discipline process (Carter et al., 2017). One understudied policy tool that centers concerns of racial discrimination in school discipline in efforts 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). OCR enforces a number of federal civil rights laws, including Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, primarily through federal investigations of civil rights complaints.
This paper provides the first systematic evidence on how federal civil rights enforcement is used to address racial discrimination complaints related to school discipline. To do so, we obtained a new dataset—via a FOIA request—with information on all OCR complaints related to racial discrimination in school discipline between 1999 and 2019. We combine these newly collected data with public data on school discipline outcomes and a variety of district characteristics.
We first examine trends in the number of racial discrimination complaints filed between 1999 and 2019 and how these complaints were resolved. We find that the number of racial discrimination complaints filed with OCR is steady year over year (200 to 250 complaints), as is the share of complaints that result in a federal investigation (about 30 to 50 percent). We also find that 70 percent of investigations are closed due to insufficient evidence of a civil rights violation. This suggests that civil rights enforcement alone may be insufficient to address racial disparities in school discipline.
We next explore how a district’s social context is related to the likelihood a district receives a racial discrimination complaint, whether a district is investigated by OCR, and whether a district is required to take corrective action by OCR as a result of an investigation. We find that larger districts and districts with larger Black student populations are more likely to receive a racial discrimination complaint related to student discipline. Interestingly, observable district characteristics do not predict whether a district will be investigated (conditional on receipt of a complaint), nor whether a district is required to take any corrective action (conditional on being investigated).
Federal civil rights enforcement remains a vital avenue available to families to address racial discrimination concerns; yet basic questions such as how often civil rights investigations are initiated and in what types of school districts remain unanswered. Findings from this study will enhance our understanding as to how civil rights enforcement efforts are operating in practice. More broadly, conclusions drawn from this study will provide important insight as to whether civil rights enforcement, in its current form, can be an effective remedy to eliminate the disproportionate use of school discipline with students of color.

Authors

• Rachel M. Perera, The Brookings Institution

• Victor Cadilla, North Carolina State University