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.
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.
Here are five things they found striking:
1. Public school enrollment
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.
2. School Discipline
The number of students who were suspended increased across the board: 2.5 million students were punished with one or more out-of-school suspensions while 2.3 million students faced in-school suspensions in 2023-24. That’s up by about 100,000 students in each category compared with the last report from 2021-22. Notably, nearly 7 out of 10 public schools reported an increase in students seeking mental health services since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to other federal data.
While the increase in suspensions may seem modest, Losen says it shows that the pattern of keeping children out of school as punishment is still widespread in America’s public schools. His research shows that most districts suspend students for what he calls minor offenses rather than unsafe behavior.
“It could be truancy, it could be repeated tardiness, dress code violations.” Those missed days of school mean missed days of learning: Losen’s research shows that about a decade ago, students were losing out on 11 million days of school because of suspensions. According to the latest CRDC, he says they missed over 14 million days in the 2023-24 school year.
“That lost instruction time matters more than people realize,” he says. “Even one out-of-school suspension greatly increases the risk of dropping out of a school or winding up in the juvenile justice system.”
He adds that suspensions are often an ineffective way to change behavior and that there are more constructive ways to help students, including with emotional support and better training for teachers.
Another persistent pattern with school discipline is who faces it: Losen says the latest data show that Black students lost over four times as many days of school compared to white peers because of out-of-school suspension.
3. Students with disabilities
The CRDC reinforces what other national data shows: The population of students with disabilities is on the rise, and boys make up a much bigger share than girls — nearly two-thirds — of these students. While the previous CRDC showed 17% of students had disabilities, the newest data show they made up 19% of all students enrolled in public schools. And they were suspended out of school at disproportionately high rates.
Losen says the lost days of school for these students don’t just mean they’re missing learning, it also means they may be losing out on key services they get during school, such as mental health counseling or physical therapy.
Disabled students are also among the least likely groups to be enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) classes in high school. Losen says that’s a longstanding pattern, in part, because of assumptions that they can’t achieve at high levels. AP classes might not be the right fit for some students with intellectual disabilities, he says, but many students have disabilities that have little to do with their academic potential.
And Gopalan says these classes don’t just represent how much rigor students are exposed to. “These are all gateways to college, other opportunities beyond high school. And we see gaps in opportunity and access for students with disabilities.”
4. Teachers and other staff
For the first time since the 1970s, the latest CRDC gathered information about teachers’ race, ethnicity and sex. It found that the workforce is 75% white, 9% Black and 11% Latino — a drastically different makeup than the students they serve.
Gopalan says the data is valuable partly because teacher diversity can play a role in student success. For example, she says some research shows that “Black students have better achievement, better school discipline outcomes, and a whole host of other outcomes when they’re taught by Black teachers.” And studies show that having more Black or Latino teachers can help all students.
This collection also captures the qualifications of teachers. “Research shows that access to certified and experienced teachers and to counselors has a positive effect on who finishes high school, who graduates, and who goes on to colleges,” Gopalan says. Yet, more than 720,000 students go to schools where fewer than half of teachers met state certification requirements, and Black and Latino students make up 73% of those students.
5. Nonbinary student data hidden
Under President Joe Biden, the CRDC required schools to report the experiences of nonbinary students for the first time. The information was collected for the 2023-24 school year, but the Trump administration chose not to release it, citing an executive order that called for the federal government to “recognize two sexes, male and female.”
“There is no Civil Rights Data Collection where they intentionally collected data and then just suppressed it,” says Losen, who has been analyzing the CRDC for more than 25 years. He says students who are nonbinary are more likely to face difficulties like bullying at school. “Whatever kinds of injustices they’re experiencing, we would start to see that it was beginning to be reflected in those data, and now we can’t see it.” According to one UCLA analysis, about 3% of children ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender nationwide, which includes nonbinary youth.
In an emailed statement, the Education Department did not answer NPR’s questions about its decision to withhold data on nonbinary students, instead highlighting the Trump administration’s priority to collect data about sexual offenses on school campuses.
Data for the next CRDC is being collected for the 2025-26 school year, according to the Department. While much of the survey will remain the same, all questions about nonbinary students have been removed from the list. Questions related to whether students are harassed or bullied on the basis of gender identity will also be removed.
Edited by Nirvi Shah
Graphics by Rahul Mukherjee
Visual design by LA Johnson
Transcript:
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Every couple of years, we learn about how students are being treated across every public school in the country. Now, it comes from a U.S. Department of Education survey called the Civil Rights Data Collection. NPR’s Jonaki Mehta has been in touch with experts who have started wrapping their heads around the latest data about the 2023-24 school year.
So, Jonaki, last time we had you on, the department finally published its data. But it was a little tricky for people like you and me to understand because of how it was released – hundreds of thousands of data points in dozens of spreadsheets. What do we know now?
JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: Yeah. So the department has put out a more digestible version. And I’ve been talking to experts who’ve been crunching the numbers, and I’m just going to tick through some of what they found. More kids are enrolled in preschool than they were in the 2021-22 school year, but K-12 enrollment declined slightly. The population of students with disabilities is growing. Black students are more likely than other students to be suspended, and teachers are far less diverse than the students they teach.
Now, those are some of the findings, and I’ll note one unusual thing about this report – the Trump administration actually hid data that was collected under the Biden administration about nonbinary students. And their reasoning? They cited an executive order that says that the federal government would only recognize two sexes – male and female.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So let’s talk about data that was actually in the report. Let’s start with teachers. Teacher diversity – let’s start there.
MEHTA: Yeah. So that’s actually one of the new things the report tells us because data about teachers’ race, ethnicity and sex has not been collected by the CRDC since the 1970s. And, A, to answer your question, research tells us more diverse teachers mean better outcomes for all students. But white teachers make up 75% of the workforce, while only 44% of public school students are white. And 9% of the teacher workforce is Black, while nearly 15% of American students are Black. There’s also a huge gap in Latino teachers and students – nearly 11% for teachers and 30% for students.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. You mentioned Black students facing suspensions at higher rates than other students. Is that part of a continued pattern?
MEHTA: Yeah. Black students and kids with disabilities are some of the most likely to face suspensions, and that has been a pattern for a long time. But in the 2023 to ’24 school year, it got worse.
I talked to Dan Losen of the National Center for Youth Law. He studies school discipline, and he likes to think about suspensions in the number of school days lost. About a decade ago, he says students missed 11 million days of school in a year because of suspensions, and now that’s risen to 14 million days. And Black students lost over four times as many days of school than their white peers, and students with disabilities made up nearly a third of students who were suspended out of school. And Losen works with districts across the country and says he’s found that most kids get kicked out of school for what he calls minor offenses.
DAN LOSEN: It could be repeated tardiness, dress code violations. It could be disruption or defiance, but disruption could be just getting out of your seat too many times.
MEHTA: And he says these kinds of minor offenses might be better handled with support that helps change student behavior instead of suspending kids.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, one more thing you mentioned earlier – K-12 enrollment being down, but more kids are in preschool. So connect the dots there for us.
MEHTA: Yeah. Preschool enrollment isn’t quite as high as before the pandemic, but it did go up 12% from 2021 to ’22. And that increase may have to do with some states investing in universal preschool programs the past few years – states like Colorado or California, where you and I are.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That’s NPR education correspondent Jonaki Mehta. Thanks a lot.
MEHTA: Thank you.
