5 things civil rights data says about public schools

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Every few years, the Civil Rights Data Collection illustrates how students are faring in every public school across the country. Joel Solis/Getty Images hide caption

The number of kids in preschool rose in the 2023-24 school year, while those in K-12 public schools declined. The population of students with disabilities grew. Black students were more likely to be suspended than students of other races. And the teacher workforce was far less diverse than the student population.

All of this information comes from the latest Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC): a federal survey that paints one of the most comprehensive pictures of how American students are being treated at school. The federal government has been gathering this kind of information for over 50 years, partly to help the U.S. Education Department hold schools accountable for protecting student civil rights.

The Trump administration published the latest CRDC from the 2023-24 school year six months later than promised. When it finally did share the information on Aug. 31, collected from over 97,000 public schools, it was without a usual "First Look Report" that makes the information easier to understand for the public. Now, that too, is available.

Federal civil rights data about students is finally out. It's different under Trump

The findings are about 49.7 million public school students and include data on enrollment, harassment and the treatment of students with disabilities, among other things. But one group was left out: nonbinary students. While data on nonbinary students was collected under the Biden administration, the Trump administration chose to withhold it from the public release.

Maithreyi Gopalan of the University of Oregon, who helps lead the research and policy group AdvancED Equity, and Dan Losen of the National Center for Youth Law, both independently analyzed the data and shared some of what they learned with NPR.

Some 1.5 million children were enrolled in public preschool programs — a 12% jump from the 2021-22 school year, but still slightly lower than 2019. "It's part recovery, part expansion," says Gopalan. By recovery, she means the number of preschoolers started rising again from a pandemic low. By expansion, Gopalan is referring to the fact that some states are investing more in early childhood education, which may account for some of the increases.

According to the National Institute for Early Education Research, state-funded pre-K enrollment rose nearly 15% between 2021-22 and 2023-24. For example, in 2023-24, California was in its second year of expanding its universal transitional kindergarten (TK) program for 4-year-olds, and the state enrolled nearly 36,000 more children in preschool or TK than the year before. Colorado and New Mexico are among other states that are rapidly expanding preschool access.

At the same time, K-12 enrollment fell almost 1% compared with the 2021-22 school year. The decrease is consistent with other data and could have to do with declining birthrates and an increase in private school and homeschooled students in some states, Gopalan says.