Civil and Human Rights Coalition Responds to Release of Civil Rights Data from the Department of Education

WASHINGTON – Today, Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement in response to the release of the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) for the 2013-2014 school year by the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. The Leadership Conference Education Fund recently released research on the educational priorities and opinions of Latino and African-American parents that is largely consistent with the findings of the CRDC:

“These data reflect the many challenges our nation’s youth of color and youth with disabilities must contend with far too often in schools.

Students of color are now the majority of our nation’s public school system, but our educational system continues to deny too many of these students an equal educational opportunity.

The data reinforce what we already know and hear from students, parents, and communities: we need more school counselors and fewer police, more preschool and calculus, and less suspension and expulsion.

I’m pleased to see that an active and assertive campaign from students, parents, and civil rights advocates has helped to reduce slightly the vast racially and disability-driven disparities in exclusionary discipline, but that progress means little to students who are needlessly pushed out of classrooms and denied their chances to learn.

We applaud the Department of Education for continuing its emphasis on robust civil rights data collection, which helps to identify our nation’s gaps in educational opportunity.    

But data alone won’t ever solve these problems. For that, we need concerted and coordinated action between families, community advocates, educators, administrators, and policymakers to attack these problems with zeal.  Our students deserve nothing less.”

Wade Henderson is president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.

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