Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights last week released its annual report and “Achieving Simple Justice,” a companion report that lists the highlights of the office’s activities during the Obama administration.
• During an event celebrating the ramped-up investigation and enforcement efforts under President Barack Obama, The Washington Post reports there was an undercurrent of pressure to ensure this work continues under President-elect Donald Trump, whose surrogates have suggested limiting the power of the OCR.
• Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, asked career employees at the OCR to keep their jobs, and Secretary of Education John King Jr., said there is an obligation to double down and intensify efforts to protect the civil rights of all students.

Dive Insight:

The Obama administration’s aggressive Office of Civil Rights will be known for its guidance about protecting students from sexual assault and harassment, as well as its reading of the law as granting specific protection to the rights of transgender students, too. Its guidance documents have created fertile ground for a massive influx of complaints. According to its recent reports, the office received more than double the number of complaints in 2016 as 2009.

While it has gotten less attention for these efforts, the Office of Civil Rights under Obama has also aggressively pursued complaints against schools for failing to provide the language access services they are obligated to under the Civil Rights Act. This means ensuring parents who do not speak English have equal access to the same information English-speaking parents do. In 2015, the Office of Civil Rights released the most comprehensive set of guidance ever released on the topic.