The Civil Rights Project (Proyecto Derechos Civiles) released
a study in March demonstrating that minority students and students with
disabilities are suspended at a far higher rate than their non-disabled or
non-minority peers. At first blush,
this is not news. Other researchers have
already documented these disproportionate rates, which have even been discussed
in this blog. But the new study, “Opportunities
Suspended: The Disparate Impact of
Disciplinary Exclusion from School,” is different for two primary reasons.
First, the authors, Daniel Losen and Jonathan Gillespie, use data from the
Civil Rights Data Collection survey from the Department of Education,
thereby providing the most comprehensive and exhaustive review of what is
happening in our nation’s schools. These
DOE data are from 7000 schools districts and represent 85% of our nation’s
students. Second, the Civil Rights
Project does not solely focus on the problem states or the problem districts
that are suspending students at such horrific rates. The study also provides the data for those
states and districts that are not
engaging in high suspension rates. These
districts have figured out how to keep students in school and engage them in
learning. These are the districts from which
we need to learn.
And why is it so vital that we learn from these districts? Because the outcome for students who are
suspended is so grim. Those students most in need of adult supervision are
removed from their schools and quite possibly left without adult supervision,
thereby giving them the opportunity to get into even further trouble. Students who are suspended are at a greater
risk of dropping out of school, and for many students, suspensions or
expulsions may be their entrance to the “school to prison pipeline.” According to a Texas study, students who
are expelled or suspended are three times more likely to become involved with
the juvenile justice system within the year.
As for students with disabilities, Federal law dictates that they be
provided with appropriate supports and services, including behavioral plans if
need be, making it harder for them to be suspended. As is, only 50% of student with learning
disabilities will graduate high school.
Yet, it is exactly these students who are suspended at some of the
highest rates.
So what exactly did the Civil Rights Project find? In the 2009-2010 school year, more than 3
million students from kindergarten through 12th grade were suspended. As graphically illustrated by the study
authors, this is enough students to fill every seat at every major league ball
park and NFL stadium in the country.
That’s a lot of students to be missing school. And exactly who is being suspended? According to the data, one out of every six (17%)
Black students nationally has been suspended compared to one in 20 (5%) of
white students. For students of all
racial groups with disabilities, 13% are suspended each year (the specific
racial groups for which data are included are American Indian/Alaska native,
Asian American, Latino, Black, and White).
But the students who are most likely to be suspended are Black students
with disabilities, of whom one out of every four is suspended at least once
each year.
The Civil Rights Project went further to examine these rates
by state and district. The state that
suspends the highest number of Black students is Illinois, which suspends 25%
of Blacks, giving it the largest racial gap of all states (21.3%). Illinois also suspended nearly 42% of all Black
students with disabilities.
Overall, almost 839 of the 6779 school districts examined
suspended at least 10% of their students.
Almost 200 districts suspended more than 20% of their students. Of the largest districts, rates of
suspensions for male students of color with disabilities exceeded 33%. Of specific districts, the Pontiac City
School District suspended 67% of its Black students; the Henrico County Public
Schools suspended close to 92% of its Black male students with disabilities at
least once.
These are bleak figures, but there is a flip side to the
coin. Not every state nor every district
is engaging in high suspension rates. Whereas
the study showed that the Black-white percentage gap in suspensions exceeded
15% in five states—IL, MO, CT, TN, and MI—in five states the gap was less than
3%–VT, ND, NM, ID, and MT. North Dakota
suspended only 2.2% of its students in the same time period that South Carolina
suspended 12.7% of its students. Montana
suspended more whites than Blacks (3.8% vs. 3.4%).
The study authors defined a “low suspending district” as one
which suspended less than 3% of students, which was the national average for
whites in the 1970s. Based on their
criteria for district size (greater than 1000 students) with 10 or more students
who are Black, the authors determined that 1437 districts suspended less than
3% of their Black students. Similarly, 649 districts, using the same criteria
for low suspension, suspended less than 3% of students with disabilities.
The authors of the Civil Rights Project caution that their
results do not automatically prove civil rights violations. The study itself does not examine the reasons
for the suspensions. However, there is
clear research evidence that demonstrates that minorities are disciplined much
more harshly for minor offenses.
Subsequently, the Southern Poverty Law Center has filed civil rights
complaints against five Florida school districts claiming that their
disciplinary policies are discriminatory (incidentally, Florida was not
included in the Civil Rights Project analysis due to questions about the
validity of the data from the state).
Other states and districts are already recognizing that
their policies, including zero tolerance policies, are leading to these
disparities and are on their own already making changes as they look for
alternatives to suspending students except for in the most extreme
situations. One of the programs being
explored by many states and districts is “Positive Behavioral Supports,” which
the National Association of School Psychologists has deemed an empirically
validated approach that can replace challenging behaviors with “pro-social
skills.” Positive behavioral supports
can be targeted at an entire school, not just the student, and according to
NASP are particularly effective for students with disabilities.
Positive behavioral supports have been used in Connecticut,
which passed legislation in 2007 designed to sharply restrict the use of
exclusionary discipline. Although the law would not be implemented until
the summer of 2010, Connecticut began introducing positive behavioral support
programs almost immediately, resulting in reducing suspensions from 7.1% in
2006-2007 to 5.1% in 2008-2009. Similar
legislation has been passed in Maryland.
The Baltimore school system, which suspended 26,000
students in 2004, has instituted changes that have reduced the number of
suspensions to less than 10,000 in 2010.
According to their Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Andres Alonso, to send
a child out of a classroom is to “sacrifice” authority and communicate that
“the classroom was not the place for this child.” Dr. Alonso revised the code of conduct to
eliminate suspensions for minor offenses.
Additionally, building principals need permission to suspend a student
for more than five days. Those students
who are given long-term suspensions or expulsions are placed in an alternative
school, symbolically housed within the district’s administrative office, to reinforce
to these students their importance to the district and that they are not
“disposable.”
The Chicago Public Schools similarly is altering its
Code of Student Conduct by eliminating an automatic 10-day suspension for even
the most serious of offenses (principals may still apply for up to a 10-day
suspension). The goal of the revised
code is to be “corrective, instructive, and restorative,” according to the CPS
Director of Youth Development and Positive Behavior Support. To this end, CPS is applying a restorative
justice approach, which is designed to teach the student how to repair damage
in a constructive manner rather than applying a punitive approach. (Incidentally, the Chicago Public Schools
suspended 72.5% of Black males with disabilities at least once.)
The Civil Rights Project study is a strong step in the right
direction of rectifying the use of disproportionate disciplinary action. By providing their data spreadsheets on their
website (1) to allow quick comparisons among districts, the Civil Rights
Project is enabling Federal and state policymakers; school districts,
educators, the media, and parents to look hard and critically at the data for
their individual districts and states. Change
can only come about when educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders
recognize the gross disparity in how discipline is meted out among different
groups.