Students with disabilities are being suspended from school at about twice the rate of their typically developing peers, with odds soaring even higher depending on the child’s race.
Some 13 percent of kids with special needs across the country were suspended during the 2009-2010 school year. That compares with just over 7 percent of other students.
The findings come from a review of civil rights data from the U.S. Department of Education that was conducted by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles. The analysis, released Tuesday, reflects the experiences of students in nearly 7,000 school districts representing about 85 percent of children enrolled in public education.
While all students with disabilities experienced a higher rate of suspension, the report finds that black children with disabilities were even more likely to be disciplined with 25 percent of kindergarten through 12th-graders given out-of-school suspensions.
What’s more, both groups — students with disabilities and black students — were also more likely to be suspended repeatedly, according to the report.
Across the nation, however, discipline does not appear to be handled uniformly. In over 400 school districts, 25 percent of students with disabilities were given out-of-school suspensions. Meanwhile, hundreds of other districts suspended fewer than 3 percent of students in this population, the report found.
“We know that schools can support teachers and improve learning environments for children without forcing so many students to lose valuable days of instruction,” said Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies and lead author of the study. “The incredibly high numbers of students barred from school, often for the most minor infractions, defies common sense and reveals patterns of school exclusion along the lines of race and disability status that must be rejected by all members of the public school community.”
I’d like to know more about this “disabled community”.
What is the definition of “disabilities” here? I would say it has expanded considerably since ADA was signed into law a million years ago. Um, what are “minor infractions”? I use a wheelchair. I was a substitute teacher for a time. I’ll tell ya’, it gives, “These kids today…,” a whole new meaning. I had never faced such menacing intransigence. It was not for me.
This ‘study’ is flawed in so many ways! Not all PHYSICALLY disabled students are SPED kids. I hate to play the race card,but I think that is the real issue here.
My foster-to-adopt daughter has fetal alcohol syndrome and has has several in-school and out-of-school suspensions in both Kindergarten and 1st Grade. She was suspended each time by the principal who has refused or requests to attend her IEP and truly understand the nature of her disability. The first time she was suspended, we didn’t take her back to that school. We put her back in pre-school and hired a lawyer. We have observed her disciplined at school (not necessarily suspend) more frequently and harshly than her neuro typical peers for similar offenses. She is also sent home for very minor injuries. We know her rights are frequently violated, we have to vigilant in our advocacy for her.
This is the problem with so called statistics, not enough information given to determine if the numbers make sense.
I have an 8 year old son with ASD mix he was suspended from grade 1 last year. I was very angry with the principle even though he was told in grade prep what my son had. He didn’t even remember me telling him about my son’s condition. The reason my son was suspended was because he was provoked by another student in his grade, and he swore at the substitute teacher. This couldve been prevented if the principle at the time remembered that my had ASD. I want schools to change their views on kids with disability’s
That is so true here in the Territory we have the same problem and again Police are not trained to recognize mental disablity in a person. therefore these people are treated like common criminals.
This is vague reporting. What is the agenda of the author/editors here? We expect that students in the disability category of Severe Emotional Disturbance will incur actions by authorities, but that is just one of many handicapped categories. Do your job; separate and analyze the incidence in the various categories.
This is definitely true my Grandson was suspended over 7 times. His IEP was not followed through for more
then half the school year, and each time he was suspended he was provoked by other students
being aggressive with him, and being that he has poor impulse control and other issues he retaliated, and what was even more upsetting, the other parties, when it was proven that they had provoked him, did not get suspended. Also, it seemed obvious that most of his teachers did not know how to handle him and took his behavior as a personal offense.
Can you imagine a worse solution to a learning problem. Suspend a child, stop his or her learning and have them fall further behind. Sat in a meeting last week where a student with a disability was suspended 8 times, basically failed school, and his impulsive behavior was never addressed. There is a problem, but we need a far better solution than digging a deeper hole.
We need to get to the root cause of the problem and solve it or we will accelerate the School to Prison Pipeline