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“California has made strides to reduce student suspensions for minor classroom disruptions, but a new study concludes the state still has not gone far enough — and in some districts, pernicious disparities remain.
Statewide, school districts in 2017 issued some 381,845 suspensions that resulted in an estimated 763,690 missed days of instruction, according to a new report by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA.
The number of days lost for minor infractions categorized as “defiance and disruption” has fallen since 2011, but reform advocates say the decline has begun to taper off. The report comes as Gov. Jerry Brown considers whether to sign a bill that would ban suspensions for so-called “willful defiance” in all grades.
Dan Losen, who co-authored the report, said awareness around the issue and a 2014 state law that banned suspensions in kindergarten through third grade has helped.
“Across the state, there have been local community advocates and there’s been a lot of research before 2011 that says you do not have to remove students for defiance and disruption,” Losen said. “It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the change started. Our concern is that it’s starting to level off.”
Losen said the report highlights a number of troubling trends.
Black and Native American students who were suspended missed more days per capita than any other racial or ethnic group. The gap for black students of all ages compared to the statewide average was between 13 and 45 days and between 6 and 23 days for Native American students.
The disparities were also present in students with disabilities, who lost 22 more days of instruction than their peers. The gap widened by as much as 48 days if the students were black, 28 days if they were American Indian, and 23 days they were a Pacific Islander.
The number of instruction days lost due to suspension remains much higher for students in middle school, specifically seventh and eighth grades, than any other group.
“The fact that it’s higher at the middle school level instead of the high school level could be an indicator that those students drop out,” Losen said.”
– The Sacramento Bee, California still suspending black and Native American students way more than whites.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
