Education Across the States — Data
The go to place for any issue having to do with education across the nation
A public comparison of reported restraint and seclusion rates — not just counts — for school districts in the 2023–24 Civil Rights Data Collection, with each district's reporting status shown.
Rates are students reported per 1,000 enrolled students. This page also shows each district's IDEA disparity ratio and its change from 2020–21, and it shows reported zeros and districts with no valid report as what they are — reports, not findings.
This figure sums the student counts for physical restraint, mechanical restraint, and seclusion. A student reported in more than one practice type is counted once in each type, so this is not a count of unique students. Rates and the IDEA disparity ratio built on this figure use the same summed basis.
A reported zero is a report, not a verified fact. Districts self-report, and this page does not independently verify district reports. In a review of the 2015–16 collection, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that some of the nation's largest districts reported zeros that were incorrect (GAO-19-551R, June 2019); the GAO made no finding about any district's 2023–24 report. In 2023–24, 64% of districts reported zero — including 148 districts enrolling more than 10,000 students each. This page therefore shows three states distinctly: reported 1 or more students, reported zero students, and no valid report in the CRDC file. Across a self-reported dataset, a zero can reflect different definitions, different counting rules, incidents not captured in a count, or a district that does not restrain or seclude students; this page does not assign a reason to any district's zero, and it does not treat a reported zero as proof that no incidents occurred or as proof that any incidents did occur. State definitions and counting rules differ, so cross-state gaps reflect reporting practice as well as practice itself.
The districts below are the largest in the country — more than 50,000 students each — whose 2023–24 CRDC reports list zero students restrained or secluded and zero incidents. The figures are Education Across the States' sums of each district's school-level reports to the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) for 2023–24, shown on the basis described in the methodology notes on this page. In four of the six districts, between one and three schools did not report every practice type; the zeros below are the sums of the schools that did report, which enrolled between 99.5% and 100% of each district's students.
State law is part of the context for these figures, and it differs. Texas law provides that a school district employee may not place a student in seclusion, and defines seclusion more narrowly than the CRDC does (Texas Education Code § 37.0021). Colorado law prohibits chemical, mechanical, and prone restraint of public-school students, subject to stated exceptions (Colorado Revised Statutes § 26-20-111). Tennessee law permits isolation or restraint of a student receiving special education services only in emergency situations (Tennessee Code Annotated § 49-10-1304). A reported zero that combines restraint and seclusion therefore includes, for some districts, practices their own state law prohibits or restricts to emergencies. This page reports the combined CRDC figures as reported and does not treat any component of a zero as evidence of anything by itself.
A reported zero is a report, not a verified fact, and nothing on this page claims that any district's 2023–24 zero is wrong. One district in the table, Northside Independent School District, was also named in an earlier federal review: examining the 2015–16 collection, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that Northside's reported zeros for that year did not represent a count of zero incidents — the district told the Department of Education it had no way to export its data to the CRDC, and it did not file the action plan required when data are missing (GAO-19-551R, June 2019). The GAO made no finding about Northside's — or any other district's — 2023–24 report, and this page makes none. For the other five districts in the table, the GAO review of 2015–16 made no district-specific finding; in that review, nine of the ten largest districts that reported zeros were found to have reported zeros that were incorrect, which is why this page treats every reported zero, including its own calculations from the file, as a report to be confirmed rather than a verified fact.
| District | State or territory | Enrollment, 2023–24 | Students reported restrained or secluded, 2023–24 | Incidents reported, 2023–24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Puerto Rico Department of Education | Puerto Rico | 240,977 | 0 | 0 |
| Shelby County Schools (Memphis–Shelby County) | Tennessee | 104,200 | 0 | 0 |
| Northside Independent School District | Texas | 93,508 | 0 | 0 |
| IDEA Public Schools | Texas | 76,810 | 0 | 0 |
| Frisco Independent School District | Texas | 64,601 | 0 | 0 |
| Douglas County School District RE-1 | Colorado | 59,816 | 0 | 0 |
Enrollment is the sum of enrollment across the district's schools in the CRDC file. For Douglas County School District RE-1, that sum (59,816) differs by more than 10% from the district-level total the district reported to the CRDC (68,215); the school-summed figure is used for consistency with every other district on this page, and the difference is disclosed here rather than resolved silently. A district that believes either figure is wrong is invited to say so under the notice below, and its response will be published here.
148 districts enrolling more than 10,000 students each reported zero students in 2023–24; the six above are the largest of them. Enrollment and figures are from the CRDC 2023–24 file.
We asked the districts. Before publishing this section, Education Across the States emailed the communications or public information office of Shelby County Schools, Northside Independent School District, IDEA Public Schools, Frisco Independent School District, and Douglas County School District RE-1, at the address each publishes for press or public contact, and invited each to confirm the figures shown here or to provide corrected figures. The Puerto Rico Department of Education publishes no press-office email address we could verify, so our invitation to the Department was sent through the public inquiry form published on the Department's own website, de.pr.gov, on October 26, 2026. We asked for responses by 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday, November 6, 2026. We will publish every response we receive — a confirmation, a correction, or a statement — on the record on this page, and we will correct any figure of ours that a response shows to be wrong. A response received after November 6, 2026 will still be published here when it arrives. On Monday, November 9, 2026, we will update this notice to state which districts responded and which did not.
State figures are the sums of the state's districts as reported to the CRDC. Select a column heading to sort. American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not collected by the CRDC and appear below the table as not collected — never as zero.
How the three reporting states read. “Reported 1 or more students” means the district's CRDC report lists at least one student restrained or secluded. “Reported zero students” means the district submitted a valid CRDC report listing zero students. “No valid report in the CRDC file” means no school in the district has a valid report for this practice type in the file as released; it is not a zero and this page does not treat it as one.
| State | Districts | Enrollment | Students reported, summed across practice types (not unique students) | Incidents reported | Students reported per 1,000 enrolled (sum across types — not unique students) | IDEA disparity ratio | Districts reporting zero students | Districts with no valid report |
|---|
Not collected by the CRDC: American Samoa · Guam · Northern Mariana Islands · U.S. Virgin Islands. These jurisdictions do not appear in the CRDC and are not shown as zero anywhere on this page.
Puerto Rico is represented in the CRDC by a single territory-wide district, which reported zero students restrained or secluded among 240,977 enrolled students in 2023–24. That is the district's reported result. This page does not treat a reported zero as proof that no incidents occurred, and it does not treat it as proof that any incidents did occur.
Search by district name, narrow by state or reporting status, and sort by reported rate, incidents, students, or disparity ratio. Select a district row for its full breakdown by practice type. The ranked view applies this page's minimum-enrollment thresholds (1,000 students nationally, 500 within a state) and excludes districts above the 100-per-1,000 review threshold from ranked lists, as the methodology below describes; searching by name, or switching the ranked view off, shows every district in the file.
How the three reporting states read. “Reported 1 or more students” means the district's CRDC report lists at least one student restrained or secluded. “Reported zero students” means the district submitted a valid CRDC report listing zero students. “No valid report in the CRDC file” means no school in the district has a valid report for this practice type in the file as released; it is not a zero and this page does not treat it as one.
Loading district data…
| District | State | Enrollment | Students reported, summed across practice types (not unique students) | Incidents reported | Rate per 1,000 enrolled | IDEA disparity ratio | Reporting status | Change in reported rate since 2020–21 (per 1,000) |
|---|
“—” means the figure was not reported or cannot be computed from the report — for example, a disparity ratio where the district reported zero students.
How to read these numbers. All figures come from the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the federal collection covering nearly all public school districts: 2023–24 (released August 2026), with 2020–21 shown for change. The CRDC covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico; American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not collected by the CRDC and do not appear. Districts report how many students were physically restrained, mechanically restrained, or secluded at least once, and how many incidents occurred; students and incidents are different measures and are labelled separately throughout. One student can be counted in more than one practice type, so a combined student figure is a sum across types — the sum of the three type counts, in which a student reported in two types is counted twice — and is never a count of unique students. Every combined figure, rate, and ratio on this page is labelled on that basis where it appears. District figures are the sum of the district's schools. Rates are students reported per 1,000 enrolled, which is what makes a 400-student district comparable to a 40,000-student one.
A reported zero is a report, not a verified fact. Districts self-report, and this page does not independently verify district reports. In a review of the 2015–16 collection, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that some of the nation's largest districts reported zeros that were incorrect (GAO-19-551R, June 2019); the GAO made no finding about any district's 2023–24 report. In 2023–24, 64% of districts reported zero — including 148 districts enrolling more than 10,000 students each. This page therefore shows three states distinctly: reported 1 or more students, reported zero students, and no valid report in the CRDC file. Across a self-reported dataset, a zero can reflect different definitions, different counting rules, incidents not captured in a count, or a district that does not restrain or seclude students; this page does not assign a reason to any district's zero, and it does not treat a reported zero as proof that no incidents occurred or as proof that any incidents did occur. State definitions and counting rules differ, so cross-state gaps reflect reporting practice as well as practice itself.
Small numbers and special settings. Rates for very small districts swing on a handful of students; rankings use minimum-enrollment thresholds (1,000 nationally, 500 within states) and every district above 100 students reported per 1,000 is shown with a context note instead of being ranked. Districts that operate therapeutic, hospital, or juvenile-justice programs — including programs serving students placed by other districts — will show high rates that describe their enrollment, not necessarily their conduct.
2020–21 is a pandemic year. Widespread virtual instruction mechanically lowered 2020–21 counts (many virtual-only schools were skipped for these items). Change figures are computed only for districts that reported in both years and should be read as “reported change” — part real change, part return to in-person schooling, part change in counting.
Methodology notes: CRDC reserve codes (−3, −5, −6, −9, −12, −13) are treated as missing, never as counts. A school that reported a practice type with no counts is scored zero for that type; a school that did not report stays missing — that is what keeps “reported zero students” and “no valid report in the CRDC file” distinct. District rates and ratios are computed from the summed counts, never by averaging school rates. The enrollment denominator is enrollment as summed from schools in the CRDC file, cross-checked against the district's own LEA-reported total.
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) public-use data files, 2023–24 (released August 2026) and 2020–21; OCR, A First Look: The Civil Rights Data Collection, 2023–24 (September 2026); U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-19-551R (June 2019) and GAO-20-345 (April 2020). District figures on this page are Education Across the States' sums and calculations from the CRDC public-use files as released.
Corrections and district responses. Every figure on this page is drawn from the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) public-use files as released. If you believe this page misstates a figure — in transcription, calculation, or labelling — contact Education Across the States at educationacrossthestates@gmail.com with the subject line “CRDC data correction — [district name, state].” We review each request against the CRDC file as released; if we made an error, we will correct the page and note the correction and its date on this page. Figures that match the district's CRDC report as released are shown as the district reported them; a district that wishes to amend its federal report should contact the Office for Civil Rights, which maintains the CRDC.