Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Millions of Children Find the Schoolhouse Door Locked — The Civil Rights Project at UCLA

Millions of Children Find the Schoolhouse Door Locked — The Civil Rights Project at UCLA: Today, the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles issued “Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion From School,” a nationwide report based on an analysis of Federal government suspension-related data from the 2009-10 school year for grades K-12. This first-ever breakdown of nearly 7,000 districts found that 17% of African American students nationwide received an out-of-school suspension compared to about 5% of White students. The comparable rate for Latinos was 7%. The data analyzed covered about 85% of the nation’s public school students. The suspension rates were equally striking for students with disabilities and revealed that an estimated 13% of all students with disabilities were suspended nationally, approximately twice the rate of their non-disabled peers.