Census News

WASHINGTON — Today, The Leadership Conference Education Fund released a report detailing current standards for collecting race and ethnicity data in all 50 states. The report — “Disaggregation Nation: A Landscape Review of State Race & Ethnicity Data Collection” — provides an unprecedented national overview of race and ethnicity data collection standards. It finds that while some states have made significant progress in collecting accurate, disaggregated race and ethnicity data, others are lagging behind and failing to collect data that meaningfully shed light on disparities that we know exist but cannot quantify. This research builds on The Education Fund’s work, in concert with state and national partners, to shed light on the power of equitable race and ethnicity data to help identify and address systemic inequalities and design targeted policies that uplift underrepresented communities.

WASHINGTON – One year after the Biden administration released plans for agencies to advance equity, The Leadership Conference Education Fund is releasing “Data for Equity: A Review of Federal Agency Equity Action Plans.” “Data for Equity” — which makes eight specific recommendations about how federal agencies can improve the collection, analysis, and sharing of data — is the fourth in The Education Fund’s series of reports about civil rights data collection.

WASHINGTON – The Leadership Conference Education Fund today released “Information Nation: The Need for Improved Federal Civil Rights Data Collection.” The new report urges the Biden administration to restore and expand the scope, frequency, and public accessibility of federal data collections, in order to identify equity gaps and solutions to remedy them.

Shortened outreach and data processing timelines will harm historically undercounted communities and states across the country

Attempts to shorten the 2020 Census data processing timeline threaten to undercount and underfund communities across the country.

Households and those experiencing homelessness can still respond to the 2020 Census at 2020Census.gov

WASHINGTON – The Census Counts campaign today launched Stories for Change, an expanding and downloadable series of videos, quote graphics, and infographics featuring storytellers and census advocates connecting census participation to a wide spectrum of advocacy, including racial justice, immigration, disability, labor, and faith. Each featured participant speaks directly to their own communities on the opportunity the 2020 Census presents to claim the funding, resources, and political power they deserve. The series of three videos were developed in partnership with Arab American Institute, the Arab Resource Organizing Center, The Arc, and Faith in Public Life.

WASHINGTON – The Census Counts campaign, housed at The Leadership Conference Education Fund, led 143 other organizations in urging Congress to take action to prevent an unacceptable and unusable 2020 Census in the wake of COVID-19 by supporting significant enhancements to the methods that have been specifically designed to count historically undercounted communities. The U.S. Census Bureau needs a clear and detailed plan that includes increases in outreach so that it can execute these census operations in a way that is safe, fair, and doesn’t leave communities behind.

WASHINGTON – Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund, issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Census Bureau’s request to Congress to push back the statutory deadlines for reporting census data used for apportionment and redistricting. This would allow the bureau to reactivate field offices on June 1, 2020, resume data collection shortly after, and extend field data collection and self-response to October 31, 2020.

WASHINGTON – Census Day is April 1, 2020 and the Census Counts campaign partners are mobilizing digitally across the country to ensure communities the census has historically missed know that #EveryoneCounts in the 2020 Census. Households can already respond to the census online, by phone, or mail, and in response to COVID-19, the Census Counts network is working hard to make it easier than ever for people to use text banking, phone banking, and other digital tools to get their communities counted.