The price of punishment — new report shows students nationwide lost 11 million school days due to suspensions
The data, from the 2015-16 school year, also show California students losing nearly 750,000 days
Children in America’s public schools lost more than 11 million instructional days due to suspensions during the 2015-16 school year, with California students losing nearly 750,000 days, according to a report released this week by the ACLU and the UCLA Civil Rights Project.
The report, based on federal government data, also found that racial disparities in suspensions remain an acute problem. Nationwide, African-American students lost 66 days of instruction per 100 students enrolled in 2015-16, which is five times as many days as white students lost.
In California, meanwhile, there are four times as many white students enrolled in public schools as African-American students, yet the total number of instructional days lost by African-American students due to suspension was nearly the same as the number of days lost by whites — 141,000 for African Americans compared with 151,000 for whites, the report said.
“There are too many evidence-based alternatives to suspensions for there to be this level of educational deprivation,” said Amir Whitaker, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California who co-authored the report with Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA’s Civil Rights Project.
The disparities were also wide for California’s Native American students and students with disabilities. Native Americans lost 2.5 times as many days to suspensions as white students, and disabled students lost 2.6 times as many.
The gap between whites and Latinos was much smaller, with Latinos statewide losing 12 days of instruction per 100 students enrolled due to compared to 10 days for whites, the report said. Asian students were the least affected group — losing only three days of instruction per 100 students enrolled in California.
The report is based on data kept by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which collects suspension data from nearly every public school in the United States. The 2015-16 school year was the first time every school was required to collect and report data on the days of lost instruction due to out-of-school Continue reading: The price of punishment — new report shows students nationwide lost 11 million school days due to suspensions | EdSource
