The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) updated Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity (SPD 15) in March 2024; this now replaces and supersedes OMB's earlier 1997 Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity.
ED has released a Dear Colleague Letter to stakeholders describing our general implementation approach of the new race and ethnicity data standards. Please check back here for more information in the coming weeks and months.
Key revisions of the new standards include:
- Shifting from the two-part race/ethnicity question to use a single combined race and ethnicity question that allows multiple responses
- Adding Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) as a new minimum category. The new set of minimum race and/or ethnicity categories are:
- American Indian or Alaska Native
- Asian
- Black or African American
- Hispanic or Latino
- Middle Eastern or North African
- Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
- White
- Requiring the collection of additional detail beyond the minimum required race and ethnicity categories as a default, unless ED requests and receives an exemption from OMB
- Updating terminology used within the standard
For more information, see:
- OMB’s official SPD 15 revision information site
- The Federal Register notice with full details on the updates
- White House blog post by Dr. Karen Orvis, Chief Statistician of the United States
ED’s full SPD 15 action plan is due to OMB by September 28, 2025 and will be shared publicly once finalized and approved. Per OMB, all ED collections must be in compliance with the new standards as soon as possible, but no later than March 28, 2029. Third-party data collectors or multi-agency data collections may require additional planning but must meet the deadline. Please check back here for more information from ED in the coming weeks and months.
If you have questions, contact us at SPD15@ed.gov. If your question relates to a specific data collection, please include the name, so we can direct your question to the right person. They likely will not have an immediate answer for you, but they will consider your question for inclusion in Frequently Asked Questions material currently in development and to be posted with a link from this page.