11. Department of Education · Minor
Have OCR report its actions and publicize prior overreach
Printed page 334 11. Department of Education
“The OCR Assistant Secretary should prepare a report of OCR's actions for the new Secretary of Education, who should—by speech or letter—publicize the nature of the overreach engaged in by his predecessor.”
What has happened
- Partially done
The Assistant Secretary put the case at length in a signed Dear Colleague Letter on pupil discipline and Title VI, tracing the 2014 joint ED-DOJ letter and the 2023 Biden letter and their consequences over twenty pages. It is a letter from OCR to the field rather than the report to the Secretary the Quote asks for, and no such report exists on any allowlisted source.
- Partially done
The publicity half is on the record. Announcing the rescission of six Title IX resolution agreements, the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights described the prior administrations' enforcement as "illegal and burdensome", "with no legal foundation", and driven by "a radical transgender agenda". The Department repeated the charge on 2026-07-23 when it removed disparate impact from its Title VI regulations, saying the Obama administration "weaponized it as a tool for the radical left".
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Two objects; one delivered. There is no public record of the OCR Assistant Secretary preparing a report of OCR’s actions for the Secretary, and the publicizing has been done by Departmental press release and by the Assistant Secretary’s own letters rather than by a speech or letter from the Secretary. Recorded in the Judgment calls; an internal report may simply never be published, which is the unverifiable-by-construction case the lower-tier plan flags.
- The report has a statutory vehicle (2026-09-30). The Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights must already report to the Secretary and the President each year, “summarizing the compliance and enforcement activities of the Office for Civil Rights” (Department of Education Organization Act sec. 203(b), 20 U.S.C. 3413(b)(1)). OCR’s annual-reports page (https://www.ed.gov/about/ed-offices/office-civil-rights/office-civil-rights-annual-reports) runs to FY2024, and that report’s file was made on 2024-12-13, before the inauguration. The FY2025 report — the first this Administration’s Assistant Secretary would make to the new Secretary — is not posted. That is the record a FOIA request should name.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- Report of OCR actions to the Secretary of Education
- ID
- 841