Are We Closing the School Discipline Gap?

Posted by University of California at Los Angeles on March 30, 2015

The ongoing discipline gap

A new report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA finds nearly 3.5 million public school students were suspended from school at least once in 2011-12, more than one student for every public school teacher in America. More students were suspended in grades K-12 than were enrolled as high school seniors. Of the 3.5 million students suspended in 2011-12, 1.55 million were suspended at least twice. Given that the average suspension is conservatively put at 3.5 days, U.S. school children lost 18 million days of instruction in a single year because of exclusionary discipline. National suspension-rate trends for K-12 indicate that rates increased sharply from the 1970s to the early 2000s, then more gradually, leveling off in the most recent three-year period, though little progress was made in reducing them. After years of widening, the gap in suspension rates between blacks and whites and between Latinos and whites narrowed slightly in 2009-10 and 2011-12. The gap narrowed, however, only because of an increase in white suspensions. Sixteen percent of blacks and 7 percent of Latinos were suspended in both years, while rates for whites rose from 4 to 5 percent. The report found a slight reduction nationally in suspension rates for all students at the secondary level, along with some narrowing of the racial discipline gap.

http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/resources/projects/center-for-civil-rights-remedies/school-to-prison-folder/federal-reports/are-we-closing-the-school-discipline-gap/