The Department of Education on Wednesday released new data showing that it has resolved nearly twice as many civil rights complaints as the Obama administration, a direct rebuttal of complaints from liberal civil rights groups that it has turned a blind eye to the issue.
What’s more, the department’s Office for Civil Rights has been working through the backlog of 7,800 K-12 and college cases left behind by Obama, resolving more cases than it is receiving.
In its first two years under Trump, the office has resolved an average of 16,000 complaints per year. Under Obama, the average was 8,200.
And in 2018 alone, the office said that it “resolved nearly as many sexual violence complaints that required corrective action to protect students’ civil rights as the prior administration resolved in all eight years combined.”
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kenneth L. Marcus credited career civil servants in his office for the surge in resolving cases and the elimination of a “political agenda” under Obama that slowed the process down.
“We have been very conscientious about following the rule of law and applying the statutes in precisely the way they were written, but that has not meant less enforcement, it’s actually meant stronger enforcement. It means that we don’t bring weak, unsound cases, but it means that when students really are harmed, they are more likely to get support now,” Marcus told Secrets.
“If you had a child who faced discrimination over the last 10 years, you would have been far better off if OCR were on the job during the Trump administration than during the Obama administration. During the Trump administration students who face discrimination have done much better than they had previously,” he added.
His office and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have been under fire from liberal civil rights groups and the media that have claimed the department changed rules to limit investigations. But the numbers show exactly the opposite.
Here’s what OCR provided to Secrets:
- In FY 2017 and 2018, OCR resolved, on average, 16,000 complaints per year compared to an average of 8,200 complaint resolutions per year under Obama.
- In the last two years, OCR has seen a 60% increase over the previous 8 years in the annual number of complaint resolutions requiring a school to make substantive change to protect students’ civil rights.
- A 30% increase in Title VI resolutions requiring corrective action from a school.
- A 60% increase in the number of disability-related resolutions requiring corrective action.
- An 80% increase in Title IX case resolutions requiring corrective action.
- In FY 2017 and 2018, OCR resolved 31 complaints annually per full-time staff compared to only 14.5 complaints annually per full-time staff during the previous eight years.
- In FY 2017 and 2018, OCR resolved, on average, 3,297 more complaints annually than it received.
“The backlog of cases we inherited should have troubled everyone, as we know justice delayed is justice denied. While many have tried to distort the nature of our approach, the numbers don’t lie. Our approach has been more effective at supporting students and delivering meaningful results,” DeVos said in a statement.
Marcus dismissed charges that the department has wrongly changed how it works through cases by not considering every one a broad systemic issue.
“Instead of seeing every case as an opportunity to advance a political agenda,” he said, “we are focused on the needs of each individual student and on faithfully executing the laws. This is the right thing to do, and the data show it works.”
