The Obama administration’s Office of Civil Rights will be focusing on the achievement gap, English language learners, and student assignments plans and integration following along with the administration’s education priorities.
John Borkowski and Maree Sneed, partners in Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C., talked about the direction they see the OCR these issues at the NSBA’s Council of School Attorneys’ School Law Seminar today.
The first year of Obama’s OCR saw fewer compliance reviews on average than the Bush administration and significantly fewer than the Clinton administration average. Borkowski said this signals that that OCR will be looking more deeply at certain issues.
“They are thinking about biting off more legally complex issues and challenging from the enforcement issues,” Borkowski said.
Borkowski wondered how OCR’s focus on student assignment plans and integrated schools would play out under the Supreme Court ruling on race-based student assignments. He speculated that the OCR is learning from the districts that it investigates to find out how districts are dealing with these issues.
An audience member asked how the administration was going to reconcile its support of charter schools with the concerns that charters with admissions criteria raise issues of access for poor and minority students.
“This administration favors charter schools over other schools,” said Sneed. The OCR may address the issues of student access to charter schools through individual school complaints made to its office.
The OCR also intends to expand the Civil Rights Data Collection in both the number of districts included in the data collection and in the amount information collected.
New categories include student participation by race and ethnicity in algebra and other college prep subjects, SAT and ACT taking, participation in gifted and talented programs, teacher retention and absenteeism, access to school counselors, school funding, and desegregation plans.
“We should get in front of this,” said Borkowski. “Where there is an area where the raw data raises a red flag, the questions should come from us.”
