Research & Evaluation Support for the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC)
The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) provides data on key education and civil rights issues in our nation’s public schools. These data are used by the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR), by the Institute of Education Sciences’ National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and other ED offices, and by policymakers and researchers outside the Department.
The CRDC is a longstanding and critical component of the overall enforcement and monitoring strategy used by OCR to ensure that recipients of the Department’s federal financial assistance do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, or disability. The survey collects data on enrollment, harassment and bullying, sexual assault, course offerings, discipline, and other factors.
AIR conducts research and evaluation on the CRDC through a contract with NCES. These efforts have included conducting site visits to learn more about how school districts prepare for and respond to the CRDC; using data science techniques to identify data anomalies; performing student privacy protections; and developing tools to help researchers use CRDC data.
Comparing Civil Rights Data Collection Sexual Victimization and Bullying Data with External Sources: Considerations for Public Users (PDF, December 2020)
CRDC data plays a key role in informing what researchers know about sexual violence and bullying in public schools. Three federal programs collect similar victimization data but differ in significant ways that users should be aware of when comparing results with the CRDC. This brief describes how the CRDC and these federal data collection programs differ in terms of data collection purpose, data definition, data source, and data collection referent period.
CRDC and EDFACTS ID Crosswalk
As part of AIR’s work with NCES to support the CRDC, our data scientists conducted systematic mapping of unique identifiers between the CRDC and EDFacts collections to create a crosswalk for data users. This crosswalk allows data analysts to link data from the CRDC to EDFacts and other school- and district-based data collections that use EDFact’s unique school identifiers. More information about this crosswalk can be found in the introduction tab of the crosswalk.
