Project 2025 would loosen data collection requirements for charter schools, undoing recent progress made by the Biden administration which has ensured that data collection better includes transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming students.
Data collection that better includes people across gender identities and sexual orientations is important for ensuring LGBTQ+ students’ civil rights are protected.
During the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has required all charter schools to enhance the accuracy of student demographic data collection by requiring that schools provide “nonbinary” as an option for self-selection.
Additionally, in 2021 OCR instructed charter schools to retire collection of data that presents purely binary depictions of the composition of school sports teams — meaning that data demographics of these teams were relegated to strictly male and female — at the exclusion of nonbinary and gender nonconforming students.
Project 2025 would advise the Department of Education to rescind these changes and issue a new Civil Rights Data Collection instructive that “will collect data directly relevant to OCR’s [authority].” In other words, that would mean only the data that Project 2025’s authors think are valid — which excludes LGBTQ+ students. Without this data, it will be harder to know where LGBTQ+ students are experiencing discrimination, allowing it to fester and harm people across the country.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “The new Administration must quickly move to rescind these changes, which add a new “nonbinary” sex category to OCR’S data collection and issue a new CRDC that will collect data directly relevant to OCR’s statutory enforcement authority.” – – – – – – – – TAKEN DIRECTLY FROM “Mandate for Leadership” p. 332
