Education Department wants colleges to share data on student race, test scores, courts temporarily suspend mandate
By Jaylen Beaner-Walker, Staff Writer
Maryland and 16 other states filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education for requiring universities to share data on race, sex, test scores, and other data of student applicants for the past seven years. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on the mandate in early April, pausing the requirement until the case is fully settled.
States fear that the deaggregation of the data may reveal the identity of students, which can be a huge risk to institutions’ obligations to maintain the privacy of students, the lawsuit said. States also argue that the data would be used as “a mechanism for law enforcement and the furthering of partisan policy aim” by the Trump administration.
“This mandate puts Maryland’s colleges and universities in an impossible position — face the threat of federal penalties, or comply with vague, rushed rules, and risk exposing sensitive student data to a federal government that has already shown it will weaponize that information,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown said in a press release.
The lawsuit comes after the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced on Aug. 7, 2025, that the Integrated Postsecondary Education System, known as IPEDS, would add the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement Survey, known as the ACTS, to its data collection. It would collect disaggregated data on students’ race and sex, standardized test scores, high school GPA’s, and other background characteristics.
“We will not allow institutions to blight the dreams of students by presuming that their skin color matters more than their hard work and accomplishments,” McMahon said in a press release.
President Donald Trump, whose administration directed the data collection that same day, also said in a Presidential Memorandum that the ACTS would be used as a way to track whether race is considered in admissions.
The IPED system is used by all university institutions that receive federal funding to collect data and other statistics on a school’s student population. Universities must submit IPED data, or they may face financial consequences such as fines or loss of financial aid.
The lawsuit said that the ACTS component will add the collection of data by race-sex pair on the number of an institutions’ applied, admitted, and enrolled students and their test scores and GPA quintiles. Family income will also be considered within the survey component alongside measurements of the amount of students receiving any kind of financial aid, including those eligible for the Pell Grant.
The lawsuit argues that the new component of the ACTS is “contrary to law, exceeds statutory authority, and failed to observe the procedure required by law.” The Institution for Education Sciences, referred to as IES in the lawsuit, follows statutory mandates that cannot be overwritten by “executive fiat,” the lawsuit said.
IES is responsible for the statistical research arm of the Department of Education. The IES aims to ensure that data collections are objective and free of any partisan bias based on race, gender, culture, or region.
Towson University President Mark Ginsberg said that providing private information about students such as their race, sex, and gender, can become a slippery slope into violating the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA.
“We have great confidence in our attorney general, who has taken a very protective position about the privacy of student data,” Ginsberg said.
A federal judge initially extended the deadline for the data from March 18 to April 6 for states involved in the lawsuit. Another judge issued the preliminary injunction, which halts the data submission altogether until a final verdict is reached. States not included in the lawsuit were required to submit their data on March 31.
