Deep Dive · No. 05 The OCR collapse · Data from OCRWatch.org
The OCR Crisis

11,985 kids
asked for help.
Only 112
got it.

The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education is the only federal recourse a family has when a school violates their child's civil rights. Disability discrimination. Sexual violence. Racial harassment. Restraint and seclusion of kids with disabilities. In 2025, OCR reached 112 resolution agreements out of 11,985 pending cases. The fewest in at least 12 years. NPU built OCRWatch.org to track every case. The committee held no hearings on any of it.

§ 01The 12-year collapse

OCR Recent Resolution Search · Jan 20, 2025 to Dec 31, 2025
112
Resolution agreements OCR reached in 2025. A 78% drop from the 507 agreements in 2024. The fewest in at least 12 years. On the same $140 million budget as 2024.1
Source: OCRWatch.org analysis of OCR public databases

A resolution agreement is the only OCR outcome that legally binds a school to fix the problem. It is the only thing that delivers concrete, enforceable relief to a kid. A case can be "closed" or "resolved" through dismissal or insufficient evidence, but only a resolution agreement guarantees actual action by the school.1

In 2025, OCR closed thousands of cases. It reached 112 resolution agreements. The collapse is the difference between those two numbers.

§ 02The categories with zero relief

In five entire categories of discrimination, OCR reached zero resolution agreements in 2025. Not one. Across thousands of pending cases. These are the categories:

0
Sexual harassment resolution agreements in 2025. 777 pending cases. Not one school was legally bound to change anything.1
0
Sexual violence resolution agreements in 2025. 334 pending cases. OCR opened fewer than 10 new sexual violence investigations after March 2025. In April 2026, the administration rescinded portions of 6 prior Title IX resolution agreements.1
0
Racial harassment resolution agreements in 2025. 949 pending cases. Title VI enforcement halted.1
0
School discipline discrimination resolution agreements in 2025. 473 pending cases. No school district legally bound to change disparate discipline practices in any category.1
0
Restraint and seclusion resolution agreements in 2025. 172 pending cases. Children with disabilities physically restrained or locked in seclusion rooms. Zero schools bound to change.1

Not a single school in America was held federally accountable through a binding resolution agreement for any of these alleged violations in 2025. Even the antisemitism, Islamophobia, and shared-ancestry harassment cases the committee says it cares about: zero resolution agreements out of 141 pending.1

Every pending case is a student or family who came to the federal government for help with discrimination. A child with a disability denied services. A student harassed for their race or religion. A survivor of sexual assault. They were told to wait. OCRWatch.org, April 2026

§ 03Special needs families paid the price

Disability discrimination · 2024 to 2025
−78.7%
Drop in disability discrimination resolution agreements year over year. 5,794 pending cases involving children with disabilities. The largest share of OCR's entire caseload. Cratered.1
Source: OCRWatch.org

Disability discrimination is the largest single category of OCR complaints. It is mostly filed by parents of kids with autism, Down syndrome, dyslexia, ADHD, epilepsy, and physical disabilities. The full breakdown of disability cases that did not get binding relief in 2025:

§ 04What this looks like for a family

OCRWatch.org documents real cases. Real kids. These are not abstractions.

Michigan · seventh grader's family
A child with memory loss. No one on the other end of the line.
OCR had helped negotiate a mediation agreement with Detroit Public Schools requiring outside tutoring for a seventh grader who developed memory loss after epileptic seizures. When the district stopped replying and the regional office handling Michigan was shuttered, the family had nowhere to turn.1
Pennsylvania · school district
Every email bounced back unanswered.
A school district that had entered into a resolution agreement with OCR to address a racially hostile environment found every email it sent to OCR after January 2025 bouncing back unanswered. The required climate survey was never approved and never administered.1
Brown University · April 2026
A protections-for-students agreement replaced with an agenda agreement.
The administration replaced a 2024 OCR agreement that documented anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab discrimination, removing those protections without explanation, and substituted an agreement focused on eliminating diversity programs and targeting transgender students.1
OCR was, for many families, the last call you could make when everything else had failed. Right now, that phone does not ring. National Parents Union, May 2026

§ 05How the office got gutted

March 2025 action

299

Of 575 OCR staff terminated.1

7 / 12

Regional civil rights offices shuttered nationwide.

25+PR

States and Puerto Rico left without a regional office to call.

What it cost kids

15+PR

States and Puerto Rico where OCR reached zero resolution agreements in 2025.

$14.2M

In FY2025 OCR funds Secretary McMahon let expire instead of using to protect students.1

1%

Of pending OCR cases reached a binding resolution agreement in 2025.

§ 06What the committee did about it

Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee tried to use formal oversight tools to compel the production of documents. H. Res. 237 would have forced the Department of Education to explain how OCR planned to do its job with half its staff gone. The committee majority voted to bury it on a motion to adversely report.2

Then the administration's FY2026 budget proposed cutting OCR by another $49 million, justifying the cut in part by claiming the Department had "cleared through a massive backlog in 2025."2 The OCR website that lists open investigations, supposed to be updated every Tuesday, had not been updated since January 14, 2025.2

"Cleared" through dismissals is not "resolved" with binding relief. Dismissal is the federal government telling a kid their case did not matter. The committee with jurisdiction over the Department of Education did not hold a hearing on the difference.

Families have a right to turn to OCR when a child is denied accommodations, pushed out of class, harassed, or disciplined unfairly because of disability. When those complaints aren't addressed, schools lose direction and kids lose their protections. Katy Neas, CEO, The Arc of the United States, February 2026

§ 07The full receipts are at OCRWatch.org

The National Parents Union built OCRWatch.org so every family, journalist, and lawmaker has the full picture. State-by-state data. Case-by-case breakdowns. Every figure drawn directly from OCR's own public databases. Bookmark it. Use it. Send it to your representative.

Stop the clown show. Get back to work for kids.

Special needs families have waited long enough. Every day Congress runs a casting call instead of doing oversight is a day a kid waits for the federal government to answer. Tell the committee to do its job.

Take Action See full OCRWatch data

Sources

  1. OCRWatch.org, "Justice Denied: The Impact of OCR Cuts on America's Students," published by the National Parents Union, updated April 2026. All figures drawn directly from U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights public databases: the Recent Resolution Search (resolution agreement data) and Pending Cases Currently Under Investigation (pending caseload as of January 14, 2025). ocrwatch.org
  2. Ranking Member Scott letter to Secretary McMahon re OCR backlog. H. Res. 237 rejected by committee on motion to adversely report. democrats-edworkforce.house.gov