Education Department withheld its 2023-24 Civil Rights Data Collection six months past its publication deadline
As of July 2, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education had not released its Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2023-24 school year — the federal dataset used to hold schools accountable on discipline, access, and discrimination — six months after its own December 2025 publication deadline. The department did not respond to repeated inquiries about the delay, which came as it cut roughly half its staff and announced plans to move the Office for Civil Rights, home to the data-collection team, to the Justice Department.
Part of: Federal Government Data and Record Suppression Campaign (2026)
Actors
On July 2, 2026, NPR reported that the U.S. Department of Education had not released its Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2023-24 school year, six months after the department's own December 2025 publication deadline. The collection is the federal government's principal dataset for tracking how schools handle discipline, student access to advanced coursework, and discrimination; researchers, advocates, and the department's own Office for Civil Rights rely on it to identify inequities. The department did not respond to repeated inquiries from NPR about the cause of the delay.
The withholding came amid broader changes at the department, which cut roughly half its staff and announced plans to move the Office for Civil Rights — which houses the data-collection team — to the Department of Justice. A former department employee told NPR that the collection team remained intact but that its future was unclear as the planned transfer proceeded. The delay drew concern from education-equity advocates, who noted that the missing data is what allows the public to measure persistent inequities in schools.
Why we recorded this
Open government depends on agencies publishing the data the public and other institutions use to hold them accountable, on the schedule the agency itself sets. The Education Department left its Civil Rights Data Collection for 2023-24 — the federal record of school discipline, access, and discrimination — unpublished for six months past its December deadline, without explanation, while the office that produces it faced deep staff cuts and a planned transfer to the Justice Department. This archive records when a government withholds or delays public-accountability data, because timely access to official records is what lets the public check how power is used.
Sources
- Federal civil rights data holds schools accountable. Under Trump, it's 6 months late — NPR primary accessed July 3, 2026
- Civil Rights Data | U.S. Department of Education — U.S. Department of Education secondary accessed July 3, 2026
See also
- NIAID bars U.S. disease scientists from communicating with the WHO during active outbreaks
- Education Dept. transfers Office for Civil Rights to DOJ and special education office to HHS
- Interior Department issued memo barring all bureaus from confirming deaths or injuries on public lands
- Secretary McMahon eliminated nearly half the Department of Education workforce, cutting ~1,950 positions across all major divisions
- Trump signs order stripping civil-service protections from ~8,000 senior federal workers