Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) Support for Districts SY 2023-24

2023-2024 Office of Civil Rights - Collection Timeline

There will be no registration for the 2023-24 CDRC data. 

• Summer/Fall of 2024 Collection Tools: Pre-collection use tools to review list of data elements and prepare for the collection. This includes the school / LEA forms, flat file submission spreadsheet, survey tool guides, Excel templates and data elements.
• December 09, 2024: Review and Submit Data: Collection open to submit the data via the file upload process or manual data entry.
• March 07, 2025 - Close Date: Finalize and Certify Data:  Review the submitted data, resolve errors and warnings and certify. Document an action plan(s) as needed and continue reviewing the data.
• Spring / Summer of 2025 Data Quality: Post-Collection review the data for quality. See data quality manuals.

Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Background

Since 1968, the U.S. Department of Education (DoE) has conducted the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) to collect data on key education and civil rights issues in our nation's public schools. The collection was formerly administered as the Elementary and Secondary School Survey (E&S Survey).

The CRDC collects a variety of information including student enrollment and educational programs and services, most of which are disaggregated by race/ethnicity, sex, limited English proficiency, and disability. The CRDC is a longstanding and important aspect of the DoE Office for Civil Rights (OCR) overall strategy for administering and enforcing the civil rights statutes for which it is responsible. Information collected by the CRDC is also used by other DoE offices as well as policymakers and researchers outside of the DoE.

For further general information about the CRDC, visit the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) CRDC FAQ page.

DPI - GENERAL DISCLAIMERS (since 2015-16)

1. RESPONSIBILITIES: The federal CRDC survey is mandatory, but your use of DPI state data files is voluntary. Data files are provided by DPI as a value-added service to Wisconsin school districts. Districts that do not supply data to DPI, such as private schools, cannot be supported. If your district did opt out of DPI pre-populating the two starter files, the burden for compiling data is solely the responsibility of the school district. It is the district's responsibility to evaluate whether or not the data provided by DPI is sufficient and accurate enough for local CRDC reporting. DPI can provide only partial survey answers, and the remainder must be supplied by the local district in accordance with the Data Matrix and Course Code Matrix.
2. DATA DELIVERY: The CRDC survey schedule conflicts with the DPI data collection close dates. Given this conflict, DPI will make every effort to deliver accurate and timely data to districts based on the condition of your data at file generation time. Once delivered to the school district's CRDC interface section, DPI will not revise the data files. All explanations of data sources and calculations are available in the Data Support matrix. DPI reserves the right to reduce the number of supported survey questions and will immediately notify districts should this occur.
3. QUALITY CHECKS: DPI data file quality is based on the data quality that districts build into their own DPI data collections. If a district knows that issues exist with the district's submission for a given collection, especially with the data elements used in the CRDC survey, local data sources should be used rather than the DPI-provided data. Districts must confirm the quality of DPI data. Any and all data in the DPI data files can and should be overwritten where local data provides a more accurate answer.
4. DATA USE: The data files DPI sends to districts should only be used to complete the CRDC survey. Data should not be used for any other purpose due to the unique formatting and data definitions.
5. DATA DEFINITIONS: In most cases, the DPI data definitions as found in our state collections match the definition requested in the CRDC survey. In other cases, the state definition is close but not identical to what CRDC requires. DPI will make as close a match as possible within our collections. The DPI data sources used, including filtering criteria, are listed in the CRDC Flat File Specifications, updated 8/16/21 document. Ultimately, interpretation of the data definitions to produce a survey answer is the responsibility of the district in conjunction with the federal CRDC staff.
6. PRIVACY: The CRDC data is un-redacted at the school level and thus falls under DPI student data privacy guidelines. DPI will neither release your district's project data files to the public nor post it on the web. Your data files will only be released securely to the CRDC contacts registered with the CRDC. Contact us for information on data privacy.
7. CONTACTS: The Department of Public Instruction Project Sponsor, Civil Rights Compliance Officer is the owner of this project.

What is the WI DPI Plan for CRDC Data Support for LEAs?

DPI provides PARTIAL data files to districts to help complete the CRDC survey.

About 60 percent of the data an LEA submits is replicated in state data, such as in the WISEdata Roster data collection.

By converting the identical data that an LEA submits to DPI into a CRDC compatible file format, the CRDC survey burden on LEAs is greatly reduced. Accuracy and timeliness is increased as well.