Civil Rights in Education: Evaluating Consent, Credibility, Retaliation, and Disparate Treatment is a two-day, skills-based course designed for K-12 and higher education practitioners responsible for civil rights compliance, investigations, and decision-making. Participants will strengthen their analytical and questioning skills to determine the presence of consent, make sound credibility assessments, and address retaliation and discrimination allegations.
The course introduces model strategies for using policy deconstruction tools to provide clarity and insight into many tasks required during different phases of the grievance process. The course emphasizes practical frameworks for analyzing evidence, applying policy and legal standards consistently, and documenting complex decision-making rationales with accuracy and clarity.
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Apply structured approaches to evaluating consent in complaint investigations, including contextual and capacity-related considerations
- Distinguish between “credibility” and “reliability” and use evidence-based methods for assessing both
- Identify common credibility pitfalls (e.g., assumptions, myths, bias, trauma responses) and implement strategies to reduce their influence
- Design questions to elicit evidence specific to identified policy elements
- Recognize retaliation indicators and understand how retaliation complaints differ from underlying discrimination/harassment complaints
- Evaluate discrimination allegations using consistent analytical frameworks (e.g., protected status, adverse action, nexus/causation, comparators)
- Strengthen documentation practices to support defensible determinations and provide clear rationales for findings
- Communicate outcomes and expectations to parties in a manner that is compliant, neutral, and trauma-informed
- Create an action plan to improve institutional consistency and fairness in consent, credibility, retaliation, and discrimination complaint responses
- Compliance and Risk Management Professionals
- Title IX Coordinators
- Title IX or Civil Rights Investigators
- Decision-makers
- Hearing Chairpersons
- Appeal Decision-makers
- Student Conduct Professionals
- Human Resources Professionals
- Legal Counsel