Schools punish Black students 3.5 times more often than white kids, MUSC experts say

Elementary schools are 3.5 times as likely to suspend or give detentions to Black children than their white peers, according to a recently released study.

The study, which included a researcher from Medical University of South Carolina, used data on nearly 12,000 students from ages 9-10 nationwide to determine how factors like social media, sleep, video games and more affect health, according to the website.

Researchers found the racial disparity even after controlling for income, special education status, reports of family conflict and more, according to the MUSC study. The findings did not apply to all minority groups, according to the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health. When researchers accounted for external factors such as family conflict and income, they found white and Hispanic students were punished at roughly the same rate, according to the study.

“All other things being equal, Black kids are still unfairly treated,” said MUSC Associate Professor and study co-author Lindsay Squeglia.

Overall, 3% of white children and 15% of Black children received a suspension or a detention in the last year, according to the study.

“Hopefully, people in leadership in school systems can read this and help affect change in a positive way to reduce these disparities we’re seeing,” Squeglia said.

One of the possible reasons for the bias is that people tend to estimate the ages of Black children at two to three years older than their actual age, said Matthew Fadus, who co-authored the study. That means adults who see a 12-year old Black child assume he could be 15 and expect him to act like he is 14 or 15, Fadus said.

Fadus, who now works at Massachusetts General Hospital, finished his residency at MUSC last summer, he said.

Another possible reason for the disparity is many punishments are “subjective,” such as a student back-talking a teacher or disrupting class, Fadus said.

“When things are subjective, Black children are not getting the benefit of the doubt,” Fadus said. “They’re getting the most aggressive suspensions and detentions compared to other kinds of disciplines.”

While this is not the first study to find a racial disparity in school punishments, the MUSC study used a different type of data and still arrived at the same conclusion, according to the article. Most studies on racial disparities in K-12 punishments use internal, school records, while the database MUSC used came from parent questionnaires, according to MUSC’s website.

However, studies have shown the presence of Black teachers in a child’s early education is associated with Black children receiving a higher level of education. For example, Black students who had one Black teacher by the third grade were 13% more likely to enroll in college, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

It’s unclear if adding more Black teachers to school classrooms would be effective in fighting the disparity, but Fadus said that would make sense.

“It would make sense that people who are Black would harbor less biases toward Black students,” Fadus said.

The study’s findings build on a growing body of evidence that shows Black students are punished at a higher rate than their white peers. A 2016 study from Social Problems found using “exclusionary” punishment methods such as detention or suspension likely hurts students’ academic achievement long-term, and that the racial disparity in punishment may lead to a racial disparity in school achievement.

It’s not just out-of-school suspension, either. Even in-school suspension is associated with lower grades and increased dropout rates, according to a 2018 article from School Psychology Quarterly.

“There is a lot of data that suspensions and detentions are unhelpful, and they kind of set kids on a not-good trajectory when it comes to the school to prison pipeline and the dropout rate,” Fadus said.

Potential solutions

As data-backed criticisms of school suspensions have continued to grow, educators have been looking for other ways to respond to students when they break rules.

One of those methods has been “restorative discipline,” which seeks to involve community members in helping change student behavior and repairing harm a bad behavior may have caused, according to a Texas education support group.

“Kids communicate sometimes through behaviors, not words,” Fadus said. The point of restorative discipline is to find out, “What is it that’s behind the behavior,” and work from there.

For example, instead of a student being given a detention for being late to class, the teacher would ask the student to stay after class to ask why the student was late and potentially set up a meeting with the school counselor, according to the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

“It’s a better long-term fix,” Fadus said.

While restorative discipline is new to many parts of America, there is some anecdotal evidence it can work.

In 2012, Ed H. White Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, implemented a restorative discipline program and saw total student suspensions decrease by 44% the first year and 57% the second year, according to an article from University of Florida’s Levin College of Law.

“Suspensions and detentions are a huge, huge issue” Fadus said. “Not to say they can’t exist at all, but hopefully people are more thoughtful, and pause a little bit” before suspending students.

This story was originally published February 1, 2021 at 11:25 AM.