Report Shows Minority Students Suspended at Higher Rates
Greg Toppo, USA Today, October 4, 2011
U.S. public schools suspend black, Hispanic and disabled students at much higher rates than others, according to a new report by a Colorado-based civil rights group.
The report by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) says that frequent suspensions and expulsions should “raise questions about a school’s disciplinary policies, discrimination, the quality of its school leadership and the training of its personnel.”
The report follows several recent studies in which advocacy groups have questioned harsh school disciplinary policies. {snip}
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The report doesn’t provide any new findings, but instead reviews current statistics from states and the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights.
The federal government found that between the 1972-73 and the 2006-07 school years, suspension rates for white students rose from 3% to 5%. Meanwhile, suspension rates for black students rose from 6% to 15%.
Suspension rates for Hispanic students rose from 3% to 7%.
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Recent federal findings also show that minority students with disabilities are suspended at a much higher rate than white students. In the 2007-08 school year, 16.6% of black disabled students were suspended, vs. 6.7% of white disabled students.
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[Editor’s Note: View the full report here.]
