Find Out How Many Times Your School District Has Had Civil Rights Investigations
If you believe your school district or college is discriminating against students on the basis of gender, race, or disability, you have the right to file a complaint with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights . Sexual harassment and assault are also grounds for complaints. The office should conduct a full investigation and, if necessary, recommend corrective actions to correct any errors.
But ProPublica says the Department of Education is currently closing far more cases without taking action under Betsy DeVos than it did under her predecessors. In addition to their report, they published a tool that allows you to find your school district or college to see how many investigations have been started in the past few years and how they have been completed.
The data is not broken down by individual schools, so the entire NYC school district appears as one record with hundreds of cases. But if you look at a smaller county or college, the data becomes more meaningful — I checked two cases in the same Pennsylvania county. Six at the University of Pittsburgh, but 15 at the same university’s medical school, which is listed separately.
For complete information on what is at stake, you will need to check local news or other sources; ProPublica only provides dates and some basic information about the type of complaint and the nature of the resolution. But it’s worth checking out what’s going on in your area that you may not have known about.
Your school has been investigated for civil rights violations | ProPublica