SUPPLEMENTARY PAPER I: ARE BLACK KIDS WORSE? MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN BEHAVIOR

The Children’s Defense Fund’s report, Suspensions: Are They Helping Children? first brought the issue of racial disparities in discipline to national attention. African American over-representation in out-of-school suspensions has increased steadily from the 1973 Office for Civil Rights data collection2 and estimates from the most recent release of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights show that African Americans are approximately 3.5 times as likely to be suspended as White students.