Data Critique
A critical examination of the Civil Rights Data Collection and its capacity to illuminate educational equity across the United States.
About the CRDC
Our team plans to utilize data from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) about Advanced Placement (AP) enrollment data to construct our final project. The Office for Civil Rights, an American federal agency, oversees the CRDC, which is a mandatory survey of all public school districts. Support for CRDC is often provided by contractors such as the American Institutes for Research.
ORC began collecting data via paper surveys in 1968 every year until 1974 from a smaller sample of school districts, transitioning to an online collection format in 2004. Since 2011, data has been collected biennially from a “universe” collection of all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico as well as long-term secure justice facilities, charter schools, alternative schools, and special education schools that serve the educational needs of students with disabilities under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ORC postponed the 2019-2020 survey and instead collected from the 2020-2021 year.
How CRDC Collects Data
CRDC collects data as part of a mandatory survey to all public schools in the US that receive federal financial assistance, as enforced by Section 203(c)(1) of the 1979 Department of Education Organization Act. The survey questions are standardized and typically request counts, such as the number of suspensions.
Before releasing the data to the public, CRDC modifies it for privacy protection. Various types of data are collected; besides AP enrollment, school climate factors, student enrollment and expulsions, access to courses by subject, and other variables are measured. Most of the data collected are disaggregated by race, ethnicity, sex, disability, and English learners.
School districts rather than students report the data, aggregating counts instead of submitting individual student-level microdata.
EDFacts Collection
CRDC also collects data through the EDFacts collection, a U.S. Department of Education initiative, supplied by State Educational Agencies (SEA) and other data assets, such as financial grant information. This data began as school-level data on the number of students served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by disability category or educational environment, as well as school-level data on high school completers beginning in 2009 and 2010.
From 2017-2018, student chronic absenteeism data was collected and in 2020-2021, school-level expenditures data was no longer collected, and instead SEA collaborated with the Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics to make the data elements going forward for the School-level Finance Survey mandatory.
The AP enrollment dataset includes data from 98,000 schools with 98 variables of students broken down by race/ethnicity and gender — a powerful lens for examining educational equity.
Key Dataset CharacteristicsWhat Our Dataset Reveals
The dataset our team will be analyzing, AP enrollment data, includes data from 98,000 schools with 98 variables of students broken down by race/ethnicity and gender. The data is organized by state, local educational agency (school district), school, and the school identifier code. There is also information on student populations with special needs.
The data is collected by using indicator values, meaning a number is assigned to a specific outcome. For example, -9 means that either the school does not offer the AP class or the data is suppressed for privacy reasons.
This dataset, along with other datasets from the CRDC to supplement it, can illuminate multiple factors regarding educational equity. Racial and gender-based inequality as well as racial inclusivity can be gleaned as the data is sorted by race and gender.
✅ Dataset Strengths
- Covers all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico
- Disaggregated by race, ethnicity, sex, and disability
- Identifies districts with AP access disparities
- Potential to reveal racial and gender equity patterns
- Extensive — 98K schools and 98 variables
- Longitudinal — collected since 1968
⚠️ Dataset Limitations
- No socioeconomic status indicators
- No student performance data (SAT/ACT, GPA)
- No AP exam pass/fail results
- No student motivation or experience data
- Humanities AP courses excluded
- District-level aggregation — no individual records
A Comprehensive But Incomplete Picture
Overall, the dataset provides an extensive and comprehensive understanding of AP enrollment by school location and student demographic, but to draw effective conclusions, outside data should be referenced to facilitate any observations. Cross-referencing with SAT/ACT scores, college enrollment rates, and socioeconomic indicators will be essential for a complete analysis.