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Office for Civil Rights
Annual Report to Congress FY 2004

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Promoting Innovative Programs and Informed Parental Choice

Transition from High School to College

OCR continued its nationwide technical assistance initiative to help students with disabilities make the transition from high school to college, making presentations at a number of conferences around the country and hosting interactive group discussions for colleges, parents, students and high school guidance counselors. OCR conducted several “There Are No IEPs in College” workshops throughout the year and co-sponsored an international conference on transition.

Single-Sex Education

OCR published a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” in the Federal Register on March 9, 2004, that would amend the Title IX regulations to provide additional flexibility for school districts interested in providing single-sex classes and schools consistent with Title IX. The proposed amendments would establish new exceptions, for nonvocational schools at the elementary and secondary education level, to the general prohibition against single-sex classes and would establish new substantive and procedural requirements to ensure nondiscrimination in the operation of single-sex classes under these new exceptions. Also, under the proposed amendments, the requirements applicable to local education agencies that operate a single-sex nonvocational school would change in that they would be permitted to provide either a substantially equal single-sex or coeducational school, rather than be required to offer a single-sex school to students of the excluded sex.

Information for Parents and Recipients

OCR uses technology to deliver timely, accessible information to parents, students, teachers, and education decision makers and to improve access to OCR information appropriate to customer needs through its interactive, Web-based, contact information system (http://www.ed.gov/ocr). Approximately half of OCR's complaints are filed using the agency's online complaint form. The Department has made certain types of records, created on or after Nov. 1, 1996, available electronically on the Internet.

OCR's former biennial Elementary and Secondary Schools Survey has now been merged with the Department's Educational Data Exchange Network (EDEN), a central repository of information on K-12 programs, including No Child Left Behind Act data. 2004 civil rights data is being collected through the Supplemental Survey Tool Civil Rights Data Collection. The Supplemental Survey is primarily a Web-based collection, and a large majority of school districts are now providing civil rights data to the Department using the Web for the first time. In addition, the 2004 civil rights data collection is the first use of the Supplemental Survey Tool, which will assist EDEN in developing a data system that has the capability to collect data from school districts and schools and integrate civil rights and other data with the EDEN database, including essential No Child Left Behind data.


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Last Modified: 11/01/2007