Education Civil Rights Office Gets More Money, Limits Investigations

Scott Schneider was quoted in the article “As Civil Rights Office Gets More Money, It Limits Investigations” that was published in Inside Higher Ed. This article describes the benefits of the new spending package Congress passed for the Department of Education. While the $117 million going to the Office for Civil Rights is over $8 million more than in previous years, some are unhappy due to the new method of fast tracking investigations to determine if they will be automatically dismissed under certain circumstances.

When asked how this narrow approach would affect future cases, Scott explained, “From OCR’s perspective, they’re saying, ‘We’re completely overburdened and we’re not positioned to respond to complaints in a prompt fashion, so anything we can do to lower our caseloads is a good and positive development. Everybody is looking for an easy way to deal with these issues, and it doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t exist.”

For the full article, visit Inside Higher Ed.