Dive Brief:

• Girls of color are among the most frequently disciplined and suspended, prompting advocates to urge changes to vague policies about attitude or distracting dress that contribute to academic failure and drop-outs.
• The Cut reports Philadelphia public schools eliminated suspension as an option for kindergartners after finding out 448 kindergartners had been suspended that year, and 87% of suspensions for black students overall were due simply to “conduct.”
• The district also changed its dress code policy to stop taking kids out of class for wearing “distracting clothing,” and the National Women’s Law Center’s Let Her Learn toolkit can help other districts consider whether their own policies disproportionately impact girls of color.

Dive Insight:

The latest round of survey data from the Civil Rights Data Collection revealed troubling statistics about discipline. Even as early as preschool, black children are 3.6 times as likely to receive out-of-school suspensions as white children. During their K-12 years, black students are 3.8 times as likely to receive out-of-school suspensions as white students. Black girls are the only group of girls disproportionately represented in suspension data.

National data presents an average but schools should be tracking their internal numbers to see whether their policies and procedures result in an even more severe imbalance. Collecting and monitoring data can also help provide concrete accountability metrics for any efforts to improve outcomes, including through teacher professional development and policy changes.