Friday, October 26, 2007

Ed. Dept. Pushes Back Required Changes in Race, Ethnicity Reporting

The U.S. Department of Education has pushed back implementation of controversial new requirements for classifying students by race and ethnicity, but is holding firm in the face of objections to changes requiring that institutions report some students as being members of more than one race.

Under final guidance issued by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and published in the Federal Register Oct. 19, schools must update as needed their method of student-data reporting to the Education Department no later than the 2010-11 school year—one year later than was announced when the guidelines were proposed last year.

The revised system conforms to guidelines established in 1997 by the White House Office of Management and Budget and reflected in the 2000 U.S. Census. That census was the first to allow respondents to identify themselves multiracially.

Under the new guidance, schools are to collect data on students’ racial and ethnic identities using a two-question format. First, families are to be asked if the students are “Hispanic/Latino.”

Then they are to be given the option to choose one or more of the following five categories: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, black or African-American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, or white.

To prevent unnecessary double-counting, the parameters of the data that schools report to the department will be different: In addition to the above six categories, educational institutions may select an additional option, “two or more races,” to reflect a non-Hispanic student who checks more than one category under question two...

This from Education Week. (subscription)

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