In Maryland's Howard County school system, black students account for about 57 percent of suspensions, but make up just 22 percent of the school population. In fact, during the 2013-2014 school year, black students were seven times more likely to be suspended than white students.
The disproportionate rate of suspensions for black students is reflective of a bigger nationwide trend. According to The Baltimore Sun, black students are suspended three times more than white kids on average nationwide. While the statewide gap isn't as wide as the Howard County one, it is still concerning.
Out-of-school suspension is a last-resort punishment that is too often bestowed on children who have not done anything to deserve it. Suspension often takes the place of counseling, mental health services, and support structures. And it means that a kid loses class time, and often results in the student falling behind.
Suspension is an integral cog in the school-to-prison pipeline wheel, which "describes a national trend in which students who are suspended or expelled receive less classroom time, fall behind in school, and become more prone to behavior issues and possibly incarceration." Racialized punishment incontrovertibly means that we are setting up students to succeed and fail according to race, as well.
Howard County Education Association president Paul Lemle stated, "Research and experience tells us that fighting to keep kids in school—resisting suspension and expulsion—is the best thing we can do[.]"
The Sun reports that:
"The most common reasons for suspension among black HCPSS students in grades K-12 during the 2013-2014 school year … were "attacks, threats, fighting," followed by "disrespect, insubordination and disruption." As of July 2015, the latter infraction was removed as a reason for giving a student an out-of-school suspension in the HCPSS student code of conduct."
One parent and member of the African-American Community Roundtable, the community group that requested this data, theorized about the reason for the disparity. Read on below.
"The majority of teachers in Howard County are white. Because of that and their background, they seem to take when a black student questions them or says anything back to them as disrespect or insubordination. When a black student expresses him or herself or challenges the teacher, it's interpreted as a threat. The teacher thinks, you're disrupting my class, you're disrespecting me, you're not paying attention."
If we are serious about educating our children, providing a safe space for their education and mental health, and teaching them emotional literacy instead of over-punishment, we have to be far more discerning about giving children serious punishments such as out-of-school suspension.
And if we are serious about addressing racial disparity, a good place to start is in our classrooms, where black students are inexplicably significantly more likely to be punished than their white counterparts.
Howard County owes the black students in that district an internal assessment, a new policy approach, and the training, discussion, and structure that can help prevent such large disparities from going unaddressed.