Southern states contribute heavily to national trends of disproportionately high rates of discipline for black students in public schools, a new study found.
Fifty-five percent of the 1.2 million black students suspended in the United States during the 2011-12 school year lived in 13 Southern states, according to the analysis released last month by researchers at the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. The study drew on the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights for more than 3,000 public school districts in the South.
In the 132 most-extreme districts, the report found, black students were suspended at rates five times higher than their representation in the student population.
The report also provides district-by-district discipline rates for every Southern state.
