On August 18, 2026, The U.S. Department of Education (USDE) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a Dear Colleague letter (DCL), providing school discipline guidance for district leaders, rebuffing previous attempts to reduce discipline disparities for Black and other historically marginalized students and calling for schools to “stop racial balancing.”
According to the letter “neither Title VI nor the Constitution requires the use of race in student discipline” and “neither Title VI nor the Constitution prohibits unintentional disparate impact; nor do they require schools to consider race in student discipline to address an unintentional disparate impact.” The DCL also says ”it is race discrimination under Title VI for the school to evaluate the racial outcomes of their discipline policies and to make decisions based on or because of those racial outcomes.″
While DCLs provide guidance for school districts and convey the USDE’s enforcement approach to civil rights laws, they do not have the force of regulation or formal policy.
For more from K-12 Dive, click here.