New Report: Suspended Education

Posted by on September 26, 2010

Grim, but unsurprising, data

A new study from the Southern Poverty Law Center finds that in many of the nation’s middle schools, black boys are nearly three times as likely to be suspended as white boys, and black girls are suspended at four times the rate of white girls, The New York Times reports. School authorities also suspend Hispanic and Native American middle school students at higher rates than white students, though not so disproportionately, and Asian students are less likely to be suspended than whites. The study analyzed four decades of federal Department of Education data on suspensions, with special focus on figures from 2002 and 2006, drawn from 9,220 of the nation’s 16,000 public middle schools. The authors focused on middle schools because research has shown that students’ middle school experience is crucial for determining future academic success. One recent study of 400 incarcerated high school freshmen in Baltimore found that two-thirds had been suspended at least once in middle school. Federal law requires schools to expel students for weapons possession and incidents involving the most serious safety issues. The authors examined disciplinary suspensions in particular because school administrators can apply them at their discretion.

See the report: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/suspended-education