California Study: Black Students, Students With Disabilities More Likely To Be Suspended

The San Jose Mercury News (4/11, Murphy) reports that according to researchers with UCLA's Civil Rights Project, disabled students in the state "were twice as likely to receive an out-of-school suspension as their non-disabled peers," while "African-American students were three times as likely as white students to be suspended. ... In the 2009-10 school year alone, 7 percent of California's public schoolchildren and 18 percent of black students were suspended at least once, according to the report." The piece notes that researchers studied "information reported by school districts to the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights" to reach their conclusions.