Trump administration scrubs data on gender-based bullying from school civil rights survey

The Trump administration recently released an updated version of a crucial survey that looked into civil rights within schools. However, the update has removed all data pertaining to nonbinary students or bullying based on gender identity. This comes from the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection, which covers nearly every public school in the nation.

The survey, which was released for the 2023-2024 school year, replaced all relevant data with a code indicating "Suppressed in Compliance with Executive Order." This order, signed on President Donald Trump's inauguration day, mandates the federal government to define sex strictly as male or female. The suppression of data includes information on harassment or bullying based on gender identity, whether districts have policies prohibiting such harassment, and links to those policies.

Only school districts that already gathered data on trans and nonbinary students were obligated to report it to the federal government, with roughly 1,800 out of 13,000 U.S. school districts submitting data. This move erodes the granularity of the experiences of these students and deprives us of a local, state, or national perspective on their school experiences. The Education Department has not yet responded to requests for comment on this matter.