Disparities in Discipline at Your School

Samuel Sinyangwe has a Twitter thread on how to use the US Dept. of Education data on racial disparities to research discrimination against marginalized groups at your school.

Search for your district on this page, and then follow the link to its discipline report.

Here’s my school district, Dripping Springs ISD, and its discipline report.

 

Discipline Report
Screenshot of the first page of the discipline report for DSISD showing pie charts for enrollment, in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, and expulsions broken down by race/ethnicity.

Black students are 0.7% of enrollment and account for 2.1% of in-school suspensions, 7.1% of out-of-school suspensions, 0% of expulsions, and 2.7% of referrals to law enforcement.

Hispanic students are 20.1% of enrollment and account for 28.1% of in-school suspensions, 21.4% of out-of-school suspensions, 50% of expulsions, and 34.2% of referrals to law enforcement.

IDEA students are 9.7% of enrollment and account for 36.5% of in-school suspensions, 42.9% of out-of-school suspensions, 50% of expulsions, and 31.5% of referrals to law enforcement.

Those IDEA rates are depressingly typical. Schools over-discipline disabled children. There is a discipline gap that’s both racist and ableist. Between compliance culture, deficit ideology, and classrooms hostile to neurodiversity, neurodivergent and disabled students face systems designed for burnout and exclusion.

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