There’s been heightened awareness and activism in recent years surrounding the discipline gap, or the occurrence that minorities — black males in particular — are disproportionately suspended or expelled relative to other racial and gender subgroups. But what’s received less attention are some of the other surprising trends embedded deep in data out of California.
Black males in California public schools are suspended at a rate 3.6 times greater than the statewide average for all students, according to a 2018 report by three education professors at San Diego State University and UCLA.
While this comes as no surprise to those in the know, data suggest that certain factors affecting suspension rates have gone unnoticed, like school size, a school’s racial makeup, and the way schools’ grades are structured — whether K-5, K-8, middle school, or high school.
- Among schools that suspend a disproportionate number of black students, school size tends to correlate with suspension rates. The rates of suspensions for black students went up as school size increased.
- Suspension rates for black students tend to peak in middle school, then fall in high school.
- Black students are more likely to be suspended when they attend segregated or “racially isolated” schools, than when they attend majority-white or mixed-race schools.
To read more of Mario Koran's article, visit: http://laschoolreport.com/unex...egated-schools-more/
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