Department of Education To Collect Data On Religious and Sexual Orientation Bullying

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights announced this month in a Paperwork Reduction Act Submission that it is expanding its civil rights data collection to include the number of allegations received by schools of bullying/harassment on the basis of religion and sexual orientation. Since 2009, the Department has collected data on bullying on the basis of sex, race, national origin and disability. In justifying the added data collection, the Department said:

The NIH’s Health Behavior in School -Aged Children Survey reported that 8.5% ofstudents (grades 6-10) are bullied about their religion. Another survey found that, of those whohad been subjected to religious slurs and degrading language in school, Jewish and Muslim students were more commonly targeted. Likewise, despite the lack of nationally representative or uniform school-level harassment data, bullying and harassment in educational settings of those perceived to be lesbian, gay or bisexual is reportedly common and has a negative impact on those students.

Today's San Francisco Examiner reports on the change. [Thanks to Michael Lieberman for the lead.]