Study Finds Minority Students Get Harsher Punishments

Black and Hispanic students are far more likely to be kicked out of school when they break the rules, including some that often have nothing to do with keeping students safe, according to a new report from a civil rights research and advocacy group.

And school discipline records are too often seen as a measure of how safe a school is and not often enough as a gauge of how healthy a school is academically, said Daniel J. Losen, the report’s author and the senior education law and policy associate at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at the University of California, Los Angeles. But he said there is no evidence that banishing some students will improve the education of classmates still in school, while studies have show that punishing students increases their risk of dropping out.

The report, slated to be released today in Washington, is the latest in a series of actions intended to draw attention to school discipline practices that some consider overly harsh or punishments that are meted out disproportionately among students of different races, genders, and ethnic groups.

In his report, “Discipline Policies, Successful Schools, and Racial Justice,” Mr. Losen argues that the students who miss class time for misbehavior are at a greater risk of missing out on educational opportunities, but schools only reluctantly turn to alternatives for managing students’ behavior. The report was published by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, in Boulder.

Analyzing 2006 data from the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights, Mr. Losen found that more than 28 percent of African-American middle school boys had been suspended at least once, compared with 10 percent of white males nationwide. For girls, it was 18 percent of black students, compared with 4 percent of white students.

“The massive increase in the use of suspension out of school, which is a really important indicator of whether or not a kid’s going to drop out, is something a school can control,” he said.

Minor Violations

In some cases, Mr. Losen said, expulsions or suspensions are necessary, or required by law, such as when a student brings a gun to school. But many suspensions are for far less serious rule-breaking. He points out that the 2006 data from the Education Department’s civil rights office found that 3.25 million students, or 7 percent of those in K-12 schools at the time, had been suspended at least once. Only about 102,000 were expelled, however.

“When people hear ‘suspension,’ they think the kid must have done something pretty bad. Most of these are for minor violations,” Mr. Losen said.

For example, a review of data from North Carolina from the 2008-09 school year found that, for possessing or using a cellphone at school, almost 33 percent of first-time black middle school offenders were suspended, compared with 4.5 percent of white students. For dress-code violations, 38.3 percent of black students for whom it was a first-time offense were suspended, vs. 6.6 percent of white students.

A dress-code violation may involve a student wearing colors affiliated with a gang, but kicking a student out of school could make the problem worse, he said.

“You’re afraid about gang affiliations, and you’ve just increased the chances of gang affiliation,” Mr. Losen said.

The reasons for such wide disparity in the punishment of white and minority students are unclear, he said.

Research suggests that unconscious bias likely plays a part in the ...

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