Civil rights complaints in K-12 and higher education saw a 64% increase during the Biden administration compared to the first Trump administration, according to an Office for Civil Rights report released Thursday.
The report, issued in the last days of the Biden administration, summarizes OCR activities from 2021 to 2025, starting when K-12 were still largely in virtual teaching mode due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report touts the high number of resolution agreements reached and the volume of policy resources issued during the Biden administration. But it also acknowledged challenges over the last four years, including an inherited backlog of cases, a "proliferation of hate perpetrated in schools," and changes to legal interpretations to longstanding civil rights laws.
Additionally, flat funding by Congress for OCR activities did not allow the office to hire additional staff needed to address civil rights concerns, the report said.
The OCR report points to examples of how its involvement changed practices. For example, OCR said its investigation into Los Angeles Unified School District's inappropriate limitation of special education services during pandemic-related school closures resulted in more than 1,014,600 hours of compensatory services for 9,310 students.
"OCR during these four years translated legal guarantees against harm into the actual experience of students in schools — at their desktops and in their science labs, on their playing fields, and in every aspect of their educational experience, fulfilling this nation’s promise of nondiscriminatory schooling," the report said.
In 2023, Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights, told K-12 Dive that to help deal with the backlog of cases, the office routinely offers complainants an option for mediation when filing a case. Those can be used as an alternative to an investigation, which can be a months-long process. Mediation had previously only been available on a case-by-case basis.
Here are some highlights from OCR's report:
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