As we enter the post-pandemic era, the data in this report can help advocates advance racial equity, support our most vulnerable residents, and chart a path into an uncertain future. With regard to education, California’s schools are creating worse outcomes for students of color than for White students. Not only are these disparities evident in graduation rates, but they also extend to suspensions and involvement in the criminal justice system. Public schools are more likely to suspend Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and Latinx students. Black students are suspended more than twice as often as their White peers, highlighting the alarming disparities in our education system.
Baker, A., Leila Forouzan, Hillary Khan, Maria T. Khan, John Kim, Chris Ringewald, Mike Russo, Jesse Saucedo, David Segovia, Ron Simms Jr., Roxana Reyes, and Matt Trujillo (2023). Race Counts 2023 Annual Report. Catalyst California. Accessed March 25, 2024.
Intended to discontinue individual and systemic equity gaps, this tool helps users identify equitable policies, practices, and values.
Seattle Public Schools. nd. Racial Equity Analysis Tool.
In its third printing, Fergus, Noguera, and Martin's seminal text continues to help educators understand and educate boys of color within protective school environments.
Fergus, Edward, Noguera, Pedro, and Martin, Margary. 2015. Schooling for Resilience: Improving the Life Trajectory of Black and Latino Boys. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
This brief two-page document outlines the fundamental aspects of significant disproportionality for State and Local Educational Agencies. According to IDEA Section 618, states are required to collect and examine data to identify significant disproportionality among the seven federally identified race and ethnicity categories in:
Identification of children as having disabilities.
Placement in less inclusive educational settings.
Incidence, duration, and type of disciplinary actions, including suspensions and expulsions.
States use 98 separate calculations for each Local Education Agency (LEA) to determine the presence of significant disproportionality. These calculations must follow a standard methodology and analyze disparities based on race/ethnicity in identification, placement, and discipline.
Citation: The Data Center for Addressing Significant Disproportionality. 2023. “Significant Disproportionality: For SEAs and LEAs.” https://dcasd.org/resources/SigDisproIntro-SEA.pdf (accessed, June 14, 2024).
In this article, esteemed scholars in equitable education Anne Gregory and Edward Fergus collaborate to investigate why focus on social-emotional learning does not ensure equity in school discipline.
Gregory, Anne, and Fergus, Edward. 2017. “Social and Emotional Learning and Equity in School Discipline.” The Future of Children 27, no. 1: 117-136.
Together with scholars from throughout the nation, Stanford researchers provide educators with relatively simple exercises for middle school school students and their teachers to increase a sense of belonging in boys of color.
Parker Goyer, J, Cohen, Geoffrey L., Cook, Jonathan E., Master, Allison, Apfel, Nancy, Leem Wonhee, Henderson, Amelia G., Reeves, Stephanie L., Okonafua, Jason A., and Walton, Gregory M. 2019. “Targeted Identity-Safety Interventions Cause Lasting Reductions in Discipline Citations Among Negatively Stereotyped Boys.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance Online Publication. doi 10.1037/pspa0000152.
The authors examined stakeholders responses to a number of citations on racial disparities. The authors discuss how a number of factors shape disability and discipline racial disparities in the district.The aftermath of disproportionality citations: Situating disability-race intersections in historical, spatial, and sociocultural contexts.
Tefera, A. A., Artiles, A. J., Kramarczuk Voulgarides, C., Aylward, A., & Alvarado, S. (2023). The aftermath of disproportionality citations: Situating disability-race intersections in historical, spatial, and sociocultural contexts. American Educational Research Journal, 00028312221147007.
The authors present a comprehnsive analytic framework for examining school discipline patterns in New York City Schools. The authors used school level metrics and ascertained that Black students received the most suspensions and received suspensions at a different rate for the same infractions as their peers.
Rodriguez, L. A., & Welsh, R. O. (2022). The Dimensions of School Discipline: Toward a Comprehensive Framework for Measuring Discipline Patterns and Outcomes in Schools. AERA Open, 8(1).
This brief depicts demographic trends and the rich diversity of the English-Learner (EL) classified students enrolled in California’s public schools. These data include the number of language learners, geographic trends in where they live, their home language, and their race.
Leger, M-L., Santibanez, L., Obeso, O. and Perez, S. (2023). The Landscape of Language Learners in California’s MTSS: Who are California’s English Language Learners? California MTSS Research Consortium, UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. Accessed September 5, 2023.
This brief includes an empathic discipline program: an intervention for teachers that is designed to mitigate the consequences of bias on their students’ education outcomes with a focus on exclusionary discipline. Researchers tested whether the empathic discipline program could be implemented through MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Support) networks in a large and diverse school district and whether it could mitigate yearlong suspension rates.
Okonofua, J. and Semko, S. (2023) Through MTSS, Empathic Discipline Program Can Mitigate Racial Disparities in Suspension Rates. California MTSS Research Consortium, UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. Accessed September 5, 2023.
