This is a sampling of The Education Report, Katy Murphy's Oakland schools blog. Read more atwww.IBAbuzz.com/education. Follow her at Twitter.com/KatyMurphy.

Oct. 5: A new report written by Dan Losen of UCLA's Civil Rights Project says a disproportionate number of minority students nationwide are being suspended from school for relatively minor infractions, such as "disrespect" or "threatening behavior." It calls for school districts to publish student disciplinary statistics by school, race and gender, to help teachers learn how to keep order in their classrooms without removing students, and to create a disciplinary system that doesn't result in many out-of-school suspensions -- particularly, of black students.

A plan proposed by the Oakland school district's African American Male Achievement Task Force would take some of those steps, and even go beyond. Last year, the school district issued roughly 6,000 out-of-school suspensions. About 43 percent were given based on "defiance," according to district data. Black male students received about half of all suspensions in 2010-11, though they made up less than 20 percent of the student body.

One of the task force's recommendations is to identify Oakland teachers with a history of