RALEIGH, N.C. _ Racial bias in North Carolina's public schools is leading to black students being punished too much and falling behind academically, according to data released Wednesday by a civil rights group.
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice released "racial equity report cards" for the state and for individual school districts showing that black students are more likely to be suspended and referred to the court system than their white classmates. The report cards also show that black students are lagging behind white students academically.
"Many factors contribute to the racial disparities we see in schools across the state, including the implicit racial bias of decision makers, structural racism and, in some cases, explicit discrimination against students of color," Meredith Horton, deputy executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said in a news release Wednesday.
Horton said that the report cards are a "call to action" to "examine the causes of racial inequity" in schools and to "dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline." The group says the racial disparities exist even though studies show that black and white students misbehave at similar rates.
Reports for this year and prior years can be found at https://www.southerncoalition.org/resources/racial-equity-report-cards.
Among the findings in the fourth annual report:
_ Black students received 55.2% of all short-term suspensions, even though they made up only 25% of the state's student population in the 2017-18 school year.
_ Black students were 4.1 times more likely to receive a short-term suspension than white students.
_ Black students accounted for 47.6% of school-based juvenile complaints referred to the justice system. White students only accounted for 36.5% of the referrals while representing 47.3% of the state's school enrollment.
_ White students were 2.1 times more likely than black students and 1.7 times more likely than Hispanic students to score as "college to career ready" on state end-of-grade tests in elementary and middle school.
Similar patterns can be seen in individual North Carolina school districts:
_ Black students in Wake County were 6.7 times more likely than white students to receive a short-term suspension.
_ Black students in Chapel Hill-Carrboro were 10.4 times more likely than white students to receive a short-term suspension.
_ Black students in Durham were 7.4 times more likely than white students to receive a short-term suspension.
_ Black students in Johnston County were 3.3 times more likely than white students to receive a short-term suspension.
_ Black students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg were 7.1 times more likely than white students to receive a short-term suspension.
School districts throughout North Carolina have worked to reduce suspensions, saying keeping students out of schools keeps them from learning.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights reached agreements with the Wake County school system and Durham Public Schools after both districts took steps to reduce suspensions.
But there's been a backlash against efforts to reduce suspensions. In December 2018, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rolled back Obama-era guidelines that warned school districts that they could be investigated if minority students are suspended at disproportionately high rates.
Horton said that school districts and communities can work together to improve opportunities for students.
"Investing in smaller class sizes, as well as professionals such as social workers and counselors, eliminating policies that criminalize schoolyard behavior and getting community and parent input on discipline procedures can all make a significant and lasting change," she said.
