Seeking to step up enforcement of civil rights laws, the federal Department of Education says it will be sending letters in coming weeks to thousands of school districts and colleges, outlining their responsibilities on issues of fairness and equal opportunity. As part of that effort, the department intends to open investigations known as compliance reviews in about 32 school districts nationwide, seeking to verify that students of both sexes and all races are getting equal access to college preparatory curriculums and to advanced placement courses. The department plans to open similar civil rights investigations at half a dozen colleges. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is to announce the initiatives in a speech on Monday in Selma, Ala., where on March 7, 1965, hundreds of civil rights marchers were beaten by Alabama state troopers. Duncan plans to say that in the past decade the department's Office for Civil Rights 'has not been as vigilant as it should have been in combating gender and racial discrimination and protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities,' according to a text of the speech distributed to reporters on Sunday. It continues, 'We are going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement.' The department enforces civil rights laws in schools and universities by responding to specific complaints from parents, students and others, but also by scrutinizing its own vast bodies of data on the nation's school and university systems, looking for signs of possible discrimination. A school seen to be expelling Hispanic students in numbers far out of proportion to their share of the student population, for instance, might become a candidate for compliance review, officials said. Russlyn H. Ali, assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in an interview that the department would begin 38 compliance reviews before the current fiscal year ended on Oct. 1. That number compares with 29 such reviews carried out last year, 42 in 2008, 23 in 2007 and nine in 2006, she said. 