Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

While federal intervention has played an important role historically in addressing civil rights violations in public schools (e.g., enforcing school districts’ desegregation plans), whether OCR enforcement of civil rights law today – specifically as it relates to school discipline – has any effect on racial inequalities remains an open question. Foundationally, systematic information on the complaint and investigation process, along with evidence as to what types of school districts are subject to this form of federal oversight is also sparse. This study addresses this gap by leveraging a newly obtained, unique dataset with information on all OCR complaints related to racial discrimination and school discipline between 1999 and 2019. I will combine these newly collected data with existing publicly available sources to answer the following research questions: 1) What are trends in the incidence of OCR complaints and investigations, the average length of case processing, and case outcomes between 1999 and 2019?; 2) What observable district characteristics predict receipt of an OCR complaint, receipt of multiple complaints, an investigation being opened, and investigation outcomes?

Using these data on the universe of OCR complaints related to racial discrimination and school discipline, I will conduct a number of descriptive analyses to examine trends between 1999 and 2019 in the number of complaints filed by year, share of complaints that result in an investigation being opened, share of investigations closed with various outcomes including (1) whether the case was resolved through mediation, (2) as a result of a voluntary remedial agreement or other district efforts, (3) after a finding of non-compliance and enforcement efforts, or (4) closed after a finding of no violation. To explore heterogeneity in the processing of OCR complaints and investigations systematically, I estimate a series of regressions with OCR complaint and investigation outcomes as dependent variables and district characteristics and state and year fixed effects as independent variables. Taken together, these descriptive analyses will provide systematic evidence as to whether certain types of districts are more likely to receive discrimination complaints, be investigated, and/or be subject to some corrective action.

Racial disproportionalities in various forms of exclusionary discipline have been a consistent finding across time and contexts for decades (e.g., see Welsh & Little, 2018). Despite a lack of consensus in the literature as to whether and how racial discrimination contributes to racial discipline gaps, students, parents, and advocates continue to rely on OCR’s civil rights complaint process to address concerns of racial discrimination in school discipline. This project will yield the first systematic evidence on the OCR complaint and investigative process and enhance our understanding as to how this mechanism of federal oversight is operating in practice.