Dive Brief:
- A new survey from UCLA's Civil Rights Project shows that academic success actually tracks with a reduction in suspensions for students, “suggesting that the move away from harsh discipline practices benefited schools,” according to The Huffington Post.
- The change is largely due to a drop in suspensions for nonviolent "disruption or willful defiance" offenses.
- Black students saw the biggest drop in suspensions, and the most reported academic progress, according to results from the California Academic Performance Index.
Dive Insight:
“Overall, the number of suspensions dropped from 709,580 in the 2011-2012 school year to 503,101 in 2013-2014,” The Huffington Post reports. For black students, the number fell from 33 suspensions for every 100 students to 25.6.
But regardless of the difference, overall, black students are still suspended at a rate much higher than their white counterparts.
Dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline and closing the "discipline gap" that plagues minorities in U.S. schools are still works in progress. Previously, UCLA's “Are We Closing the School Discipline Gap?” found that, out of 3.5 million public school students suspended at least once in 2011-12, 16% of black students had been suspended as opposed to just 5% of whites. Minority students are also disproportionately suspended in Southern states.
Recently, cities like Minneapolis and Seattle have also made strides in tackling the problem by ending suspensions for elementary school students. Outgoing U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has touted the pipeline's eradication as a means for states to generate revenue by avoiding incarceration costs that may follow students subjected to harsher disciplinary procedures.