The report by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) says that frequent suspensions and expulsions should "raise questions about a school's disciplinary policies, discrimination, the quality of its school leadership and the training of its personnel."
The report follows several recent studies in which advocacy groups have questioned harsh school disciplinary policies. Most notably, the Council of State Governments, a Kentucky-based research organization, looked at suspension and expulsion rates for Texas public schools and found in July that nearly six in 10 students had been suspended or expelled at least once between seventh and 12th grade.
The latest findings "strongly suggest a need for reform," according to the NEPC, based at the University of Colorado-Boulder's School of Education. The center is a left-leaning think tank that studies racial justice in K-12 education.
