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Lost Opportunities: How Disparate School Discipline Continues to Drive Differences in the Opportunity to Learn

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Lost Opportunities: How Disparate School Discipline Continues to Drive Differences in the Opportunity to Learn Lost Opportunities How Disparate School Discipline Continues to Drive Differences in the Opportunity to Learn Daniel J. Losen and Paul Martinez OCTOBER 2020 Acknowledgments The authors thank our Learning Policy Institute (LPI) colleagues Jessica Cardichon, Caitlin Scott, and Patrick Shields for extensive helpful feedback and support on several versions of the report. We are also grateful to Bianca Marconcini for her volunteer efforts reviewing state noncompliance with reporting of policing data. We also thank Dody Riggs for her excellent editing assistance. A warm thank-you to Laurie Russman, the administrative point person at the Civil Rights Project, for the numerous ways her work supported these efforts. Our acknowledgments would not be complete without a deep thank-you to the Directors of the Civil Rights Project, Gary Orfield and Patricia Gándara, whose particular feedback inspired several improvements and whose enduring support and wisdom is a constant source of inspiration for the work of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies. In addition, we thank Erin Chase and Aaron Reeves for their editing and design contributions to this project and the entire LPI communications team for its invaluable support in developing and disseminating this report. Without their generosity of time and spirit, this work would not have been possible. This research was supported by the California Endowment and the Learning Policy Institute. Core operating support for the Learning Policy Institute is provided by the Heising-Simons Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. We are grateful to them for their generous support. The ideas voiced here are those of the authors and not those of our funders. External Reviewers This report benefited from the insights and expertise of two external reviewers: Rebecca Fitch, Former Project Manager for the Civil Rights Data Collection at the U.S. Department of Education; and Ajmel Quereshi, Senior Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. We thank them for the care and attention they gave the report. The appropriate citation for this report is: Losen, D. J., & Martinez, P. (2020). Lost opportunities: How disparate school discipline continues to drive differences in the opportunity to learn. Palo Alto, CA/Los Angeles, CA: Learning Policy Institute; Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project, UCLA. The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at The Civil Rights Project This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Document last revised February 17, 2021 i LOST OPPORTUNITIES Table of Contents Executive Summary ..................................................................................................................................iv Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 1 Measuring Suspensions .........................................................................................................................................................4 Part I: The Disparate Impact on Educational Opportunity Is Measured in Days of Lost Instruction Due to Out-of-School Suspensions .......................................................6 Racial Disparities Are More Pronounced When Further Disaggregated by Gender .....................7 State-Level Racial Disparities Are Often Larger Than the National Disparities Suggest............8 Districts Where Students Lost a Year of Instruction per 100 Enrolled ....................................................11 Alternative Schools and Lost Instruction ..................................................................................................................16 Part II: High Rates and Large Disparities and Trends Over Time ............................................. 20 Combining Secondary and Elementary Rates Masks the High Rates at the Secondary Level .........................................................................................................................................................21 District Trends Show Some Very Large Reductions in the Risk for Suspension but Also Dramatic Increases ....................................................................................................................................... 27 Districts With Highest Suspension Rates for Specific Subgroups ..........................................................29 Districts With Highest Suspension Rates for Native Americans ..............................................................30 Part III: School Policing, Lost Instruction, Referrals to Law Enforcement, and School-Related Arrests ................................................................................................................. 33 Discussion ..................................................................................................................................................41 Recommendations ...................................................................................................................................47 Appendix A: Methods and Data Cleaning ........................................................................................51 Appendix B: Discipline Reform and Chaos ......................................................................................57 Appendix C: Additional Data Referenced in Part I of Report ..................................................... 59 Appendix D: Additional Data Referenced in Part II of Report ....................................................67 Appendix E: Referrals to Law Enforcement and School-Related Arrests ...............................76 Endnotes .................................................................................................................................................... 80 About the Authors ................................................................................................................................... 98 ii LOST OPPORTUNITIES List of Figures and Tables Figure 1: National Overview (2015–16): Impact on Instruction Due to Out-of-School Suspensions by Race and, Separately, for Students With Disabilities for K–12, Elementary, and Secondary Levels .............................................................................................................6 Figure 2: Impact of Lost Instruction in K–12, Elementary, and Secondary Levels for Latinx, Black, and White by Gender in the U.S. (2015–16) ............................................................7 Figure 3: Percentage of Students Enrolled in Districts With at Least 1 Academic Year of Lost Instruction per 100 Enrolled for Selected Groups (2015–16) ........................14 Figure 4: National Review of Impact of Out-of-School Suspensions on Instructional Time for Students Enrolled in Alternative Schools (2015–16) ...................................................18 Figure 5: Trends in Out-of-School Student Suspension Rates by Race/Ethnicity in K–12........20 Figure 6: Out-of-School Suspension Rates Over Time by Race/Ethnicity: Elementary and Secondary Levels ...........................................................................................................22 Figure 7: Recent Trend in Secondary School Students’ Risk for Out-of-School Suspension by Race With Disability (IDEA) (2011–12 to 2015–16) ........................................24 Figure 8: Top 5 States Where Suspension Risk Declined the Most for All Students at the Secondary Level (2011–12 to 2015–16) .....................................................................................25 Table 1: State Rankings by Racial Gap and Student Days of Lost Instruction per 100 Enrolled at the Secondary Level (2015–16) ..........................................................................8 Table 2: Rates of Lost Instruction in Days per 100 Enrolled in Large Districts Where Secondary Students Lost at Least 1 Academic Year (2015–16) ..............................12 Table 3: Days of Lost Instruction Due to Out-of-School Suspension per 100 Students for a Selection of Largest Districts at the Secondary Level (2015–16) ...............................15 Table 4: Top 5 Districts: Largest Decline in Out-of-School Suspension Risk at the Secondary Level From 2011–12 to 2015–16 ........................................................................... 27 Table 5: Top 5 Districts: Largest Increase in Out-of-School Suspension Risk at the Secondary Level From 2011–12 to 2015–16 ...........................................................................28 Table 6: Changes in Districts With Highest Suspension Rates for Latinx Students (2011–12 and 2015–16) ........................................................................................................................................29 Table 7: Changes in Native American Suspension Rates in Some of the Highest-Suspending Districts (2015–16) ................................................................................................31 Table 8: Top 25 Districts for Black Secondary Student School-Related Arrest Percentage Rates (2015–16) .......................................................................................................................... 37 LOST OPPORTUNITIES iii Executive Summary During the 2015–16 school year, according to national estimates released by
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