Today's education landscape, including how students experience school, can reflect pervasive educational inequities. Past federal administrations and congresses, recognizing their critical role in addressing inequality, often acted to address disparities and violations of students' civil rights that had been left unresolved by states and districts. In addition to legislation, presidential administrations have several other tools at their disposal that allow them to play a significant role in ameliorating educational inequalities. These include issuing federal guidance, regulations, and statements of administration policy, as well as use of an administration's investigative powers, data collection and dissemination, and budgetary requests. The extent to which administrations have chosen to leverage these opportunities to advance civil rights has changed over time. Some administrations have chosen to take strong action not only to enforce protection under the law, but also to prevent instances of discrimination from arising. The Obama administration issued guidance on civil rights and school discipline that described how schools can meet their legal obligations under federal law to administer student discipline without discriminating against students on the basis of race, color, or national origin, which the Trump administration chose to rescind. This report examines how this shift in the federal role in education could affect protections of students' civil rights in the area of school discipline. The report discusses the underlying research that has been used to inform and identify best practices for supporting student behavior and achievement and keeping schools safe, the progress that has been made using research-based best practices, and the consequences of the administration's decision to roll back this guidance for productive approaches to school discipline.