Civil Rights, Education, and Research Groups: OMB Must Maintain Critical Data Collection on Preschool Suspension

WASHINGTON – Today, 149 national, state and local groups urged the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to maintain the question about preschool/child care suspension and expulsion in the 2017 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). This data fills a crucial gap in the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) by including data from parents whose children are not in public preschools and contributes to public understanding of the scope, frequency, and racially disproportionate use of suspensions and expulsions on young children.

In the April 11, 2017 notice published in the Federal Register, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed removing the question from the survey. The civil rights, education and research groups’ comments to Dominic J. Mancini, the Acting Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) call for the retention of the preschool suspension and expulsion question in the collection and future collections so that parents, advocates, educators, service providers, researchers, policymakers, and the public have access to data to drive change in the service of high-quality and equitable supports for, and treatment of, all children.

“As organizations committed to the fair and appropriate treatment of all children in all settings, we have long been alarmed by the high and racially disproportionate rates of exclusionary discipline of children beginning in early childhood and continuing through high school…Given clear data that expulsions and suspensions regularly occur in preschool settings and have a negative impact on child development, health, and education we continue to press for changes to policy and practice – and the critical data that makes systemic change possible,” the letter states.

The full letter to OIRA is available here.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is 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 to build 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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