The school suspension gap starts young. In public preschools, black children make up 48 percent of students suspended more than once, but only 18 percent of total enrollment. By comparison, white students make up 26 percent of multiple suspensions but 43 percent of enrollment, new federal data reveals.
For the first time, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights included preschool discipline in its annual data collection, which it released Friday morning with data from all public school districts in 2011-12. Out of about 1 million public school preschoolers, nearly 5,000 were suspended once that year, and more than 2,500 were suspended more than once.
The data add a new layer to the growing concern among civil rights advocates about inequities in school discipline. And it comes at a time when President Obama has been pushing to expand access to early childhood education and promoting ways to help boys of color succeed. Of the preschoolers suspended multiple times, 82 percent are boys, even though boys are only 54 of total enrollment, the data show.
Racial gap in discipline found in preschool, US data show
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