I. What is Known About Policies That Remove Students from School?
Policies that result in out-of-school suspensions and expulsions are described as “exclusionary,” because they remove students from school. The emphasis of the analysis here is placed on out-of-school suspensions, rather than expulsions, in part, because schools expel rather than suspend the most serious offenders, such as students who pose a real danger to others. Further, the use of suspensions dwarfs expulsions by about 32 to 1. According to U.S. Department of Education's (ED) 2006 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), over 3.25 million students, approximately 7 per cent of all students enrolled in K-12, are estimated to have been suspended at least once (ED, 2011). That means that on average, for each day public schools are in session in America approximately 18,000 public school students are suspended out of school for at least a day. In contrast, on average, nationwide, there are about 560 expulsions per day.
A. DATA FROM THE U.S. OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS (OCR) SHOWS LARGE INCREASES IN SUSPENSION RATES
Since 1968, the federal government has been collecting data on out-of-school suspension and expulsion (Hawley & Ready, 2003). OCR administers a biennial survey, which typically includes one third to one half of U.S. public schools and districts. In 2000, a nearly universal survey was conducted and another universal survey is scheduled for 2011-12. Schools are instructed to count each suspended student only once, even if the student received several suspensions. This headcount data can be used to determine what percentage of a given subgroup was suspended. Researchers point out, however, that the unduplicated data yield a conservative estimate of students' time out-of-school because the data do not capture repeat suspensions or the length of the suspensions (Losen & Skiba, 2010).
Frequency and Racial Disparity
An analysis of OCR data describing the number of students, without duplication (not incidents), shows a large increase in K-12 suspension rates for all groups since the early 1970s (Figure 1), more than doubling since the early 1970s for all non-Whites, but not for Whites (Losen & Skiba, 2010). Concurrently, the Black/White gap more than tripled, rising from a difference of three percentage points in the 1970s to over 10 percentage points in 2006. Approximately one out of every seven Black students enrolled was suspended at least once compared to about one out of every 20 White students.
TABULAR OR GRAPHIC MATERIAL SET FORTH AT THIS POINT IS NOT DISPLAYABLE
Figure 1 Racial impact of the rising use of suspension.
B. MIDDLE SCHOOL, RACE AND SEX
The 2010 report, Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis, revealed profound racial and gender disparities at the middle-school level, showing much higher rates than appear when *390 aggregate K-12 data are analyzed (above) (Losen & Skiba, 2010). For example (Figure 2), based on OCR data from every state, 28 per cent of Black males in middle school were suspended, compared to just 10 per cent of White males. Moreover, 18 per cent of Black females were suspended, compared to just 4 per cent of White females. The report's further analysis of data for 18 of the nation's largest districts found that in 15 of them, at least 30 per cent of all enrolled Black males were suspended one or more times. Across these 18 urban districts, hundreds of individual schools had extraordinarily high suspension rates--50 per cent or higher for Black males.
TABULAR OR GRAPHIC MATERIAL SET FORTH AT THIS POINT IS NOT DISPLAYABLE
Figure 2 Racial disparities in middle-school student suspension rates by race/ethnicity and sex.
Racial disparities in discipline also appear within the subgroup of students with disabilities. Reported rates of suspensions of at least one day, showed that in ten states in 2007-2008 more than one in five Black students with disabilities were suspended, and three states (Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Nevada) suspended over 30 per cent of all Black students with disabilities, with Nebraska the highest at 37 per cent. In contrast, in those same states, White students with disabilities were suspended at half to one fifth the rate of Blacks, with White rates never exceeding 12 per cent (Data Accountability Center, 2007-08).
