Directive 15 and Implications for Districts and Schools
Directive 15 is a U.S. Office of Management and Budget policy that provides standard classifications for record keeping, collection, and presentation of data and race and ethnicity in federal program administrative and reporting and statistical activities. Tracking race and ethnicity is a federal requirement. New guidance for Directive 15 was announced with timelines for implementation in June of 2024.
MENA is the acronym for the newest race and ethnicity category that will be tracked. MENA stands for Middle Eastern North African. This was determined after reviewing over 20,000 public comments and 100 listening sessions on how to best collect race and ethnicity in the United States.
Implications for NAEP
Changing the categories for race and ethnicity will have impacts on trend lines and the data. In addition, it still needs to be determined how best to collect race and ethnicity data moving forward given the new guidance. NAEP and the U.S. Department of Education, along with all the statistical reporting agencies, are working to determine the best practices to collect data.
Dr. Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), recently announced how NAEP will utilize our upcoming field test to determine the best methods of data collection moving forward in our field test. NAEP and NCES are also interested in measuring the effect size and impact to trend lines in an unbiased manner. NAEP is looking to gain insight into other aspects of the data collection around race and ethnicity.
