*(Via USA Today) – African-American students are nearly four times as likely as their white classmates to be suspended from school, new federal data show, a stark reminder that more than 60 years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, public school is a different place for many minority students than it is for white students.
From gifted-and-talented programs to teacher experience to advanced science and math courses, the data show, the schools that enroll large numbers of minority students are unequal in nearly every way.
U.S. Education Secretary John King said the findings lay bare the USA’s “systemic failure” to educate all students equally.
“These data show that we still fall far short of that ideal,” he said, noting that students of color, those whose first language is not English and those with disabilities are “not getting same opportunities to learn” as other classmates.
“When we deny some students access to a high-quality education, we all lose out in multiple ways,” he said.
The new data, out Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Education and required by Congress, show that African-American K-12 students are 3.8 times as likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions as white students. While 6% of all students received one or more out-of-school suspensions in the 2013-2014 school year, the percentage was 18% for African-American boys and 10% for African-American girls.
By contrast, among white students, only 5% of boys and 2% of girls were suspended at least once, according to the data, released biannually by the department’s Office of Civil Rights.
Get the rest of this report at USA Today.
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