State bill would halt suspensions up to sixth grade
April 5, 2017 – The Philadelphia Tribune – by Stacy M. Brown
HARRISBURG — Year after year, African-American students and other minorities have faced much harsher discipline in public schools than their peers, based on information provided by the state Department of Education.
A further probing of the numbers, issued recently by the Civil Rights Data Collection, revealed that 1 in 5 African-American boys and more than 1 in 10 African-American girls received out-of-school suspensions at rates that are more than three times than their white peers.
If those figures aren’t disconcerting enough, two state lawmakers said the children who are receiving the most out-of-school suspensions are those in kindergarten through fifth grade.