Administrative Advocacy

Civil Rights Data Collection and LGBTQ+ youth in K-12 schools

GLSEN’s comment letter voices support for many new and restored measures on the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed 2021-2022 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) and urges the Department to adopt additional measures and revisions, technical assistance practices, and reporting practices that best enable an evaluation of school climate conditions and discriminatory school practices impacting LGBTQ+ youth, particularly those who are transgender, nonbinary, Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), students with disabilities, and students experiencing homelessness. (See 86 Federal Register §236.)

Update: The U.S. Department of Education revised measures to better capture the presence of law enforcement officers in K-12 schools, but did not make changes to include measures of confirmed incidents and discipline related to harassment or bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. In a second comment, GLSEN again urged the Department to add such measures, which are necessary to analyze disparities in student groups across race and ethnicity. (See 87 Federal Register §185).