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• By Morgan Craven, J.D. & Makiah Lyons, J.D. • IDRA Newsletter • February 2025 •

As Black women at IDRA, we wanted to take time during Black History Month to reflect on the hopes we have for the Black girls in our lives and the vision we have for a future where they are encouraged and supported to dream, be joyful and live their fullest lives.

During February (and throughout the year), we celebrate Black women who challenged the status quo, refused to stay in their “place” and broke barriers to achieve excellence.

We draw joy and inspiration from reflecting on our shared heroines and on the Black women in our personal lives who may not have made the history books but whose contributions to us were no less life-changing and precious.

Reflecting on the past also enables us to more clearly see the present we are in and the future we must create. Our critical work is to ensure that while many of these incredible Black women we celebrate were the “firsts,” they will not be the last.

While we need systems designed for all people to succeed, we also must focus on Black girls and women because they often face the greatest disparities in many facets of life.

The Path of Black Girls

To do this work, policymakers, school leaders, parents and educators must intentionally, and urgently, demolish the systemic barriers that prevent Black girls from being their best. We need systems that meaningfully support our Black girls, ensuring they have fair opportunities to learn, grow and succeed.

While we need systems designed for all people to succeed, we also must focus on Black girls and women because they often face the greatest disparities in many facets of life: how much money they earn, the quality of healthcare they receive, the support they can access to start businesses, how they experience “justice” in the criminal legal system, the wealth they are able to accumulate over their lifetimes, and even how educators discipline them.

In this article, we review recent findings from a report on the treatment of Black girls in school discipline and IDRA’s work to support Black girls as they seek to challenge harmful systems in their own schools and communities.

Black Girls and School Discipline: Findings from Recent Federal Analysis

A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights the discriminatory nature of school discipline in the United States and how Black girls, in particular, bear the brunt of schools’ harmful reliance on exclusionary and punitive discipline.

The report, entitled Nationally, Black Girls Receive More Frequent and More Severe Discipline in Schools than Other Girls, analyzed national pre-pandemic discipline data and found that Black girls are more likely to be punished than any other group of girls.

Additionally, Black girls are more likely to receive harsher punishments than other girls, even for similar behaviors.

In every state, Black girls are disciplined at higher rates than other girls. For example, Black girls are suspended out of school at a rate 5.2 times that of white girls.

Black girls only comprise 15% of girls enrolled in U.S. public schools, but among all girls:

• Black girls receive 3.7% of in-school suspensions,
• Black girls receive 45% of out-of-school suspensions,
• Black girls receive about 47% of corporal punishments,
• Black girls receive about 43% of expulsions, and
• Black girls receive about 36% of school-related arrests.

These disparities are worse for Black girls with disabilities, who are punished at higher rates than Black girls without disabilities and at higher rates than other girls with disabilities.

The GAO study also reported several school factors that were associated with increased discipline for girls, including the percentage of new teachers, the presence of school-based police, and the percentage of girls in the school with disabilities.

Importantly, the analysis showed that the national overrepresentation of Black girls in the discipline system is driven by differences in punishment decisions within the same schools. While it is true that Black girls are more likely to be enrolled in schools that have higher overall rates of exclusionary discipline, the gap in punishment between Black and white girls is mainly due to differences in how they are punished within the same schools, sometimes for the same behaviors.

Adults in schools tend to view the behaviors of Black girls differently than they view the same behaviors exhibited by other girls. Researchers found that, even controlling for a number of school and individual factors, Black girls are three times more likely to be suspended than their white peers (Erickson & Pearson, 2022).

While some other girls of color (including Native American and multiracial girls) are also overrepresented in some punishments, the degree of overrepresentation for Black girls is far greater. Researchers have attributed this particular discrimination to a number of factors, including adultification bias, which is the tendency to view Black girls as older, more promiscuous and more culpable (Epstein, 2017).

This bias can lead to referrals for harsher forms of discipline and decreased nurturing and support in school. It can also impact how adults view violations of certain school rules and expectations like disrespectful behavior and school dress codes (see IDRA, 2024).

Researchers found that, even after controlling for a number of factors, Black girls were still more likely to be targeted for punishment than their peers. Their families’ involvement in the school did not decrease that likelihood, nor did their own excellent academic performance.

In fact, as the federal GAO report notes, one data analysis shows that differences in suspension rates between Black girls and their white peers were actually most stark among the highest-achieving students (GAO, 2024; Lehmann & Meldrum, 2018).

Additionally, adults in schools demonstrate harmful color bias. Black girls with darker complexions are more likely to experience these biases and punishments than their peers. Researchers have found that Black girls with darker skin tones are more likely to be suspended than their Black peers with lighter skin tones (Blake et al., 2017).

The GAO report also examined perceptions of safety and belonging among Black girls in U.S. schools using surveys from the National Crime Victimization Survey, School Crime Supplement, which gathers information about safety, engagement and school climate.

Black girls were more likely than their peers to report feeling unsafe in school and to disagree with the statement that “school rules were fair” (GAO, 2024). This understanding of systemic unfairness, supported by the data showing unfair discipline practices, can impact students’ connections to school, including attendance and academic success.

IDRA’s Work to Address the Discriminatory Treatment of Black Girls in Schools

The GAO report added an important review of federal discipline data and its impact on Black girls to a growing body of research, years of advocacy, and conversations that students, families, schools and advocates have been having.

How do we address the clear disparities in treatment, discipline and access to education that Black girls face? How do we tackle the deep biases about Black women and girls that impact how far too many adults view their behaviors and potential? How do we ensure Black women and girls are leaders in identifying meaningful, systemic solutions to these issues?

We demand answers to these questions because we know that being pushed out of school can have immediate and lasting consequences for students, including missed learning and socialization time in the classroom, an increased risk of academic failure and grade retention, and lower graduation and college enrollment rates (Onyeka-Crawford, 2017).

Additionally, punitive discipline fails to address, and can even worsen, existing challenges that students face, like mental health needs, bullying and home stressors. Many of these risks and underlying challenges are even greater for Black girls.

One way IDRA is working with Black girls and women to answer those questions and find solutions to the barriers that block their access to educational and other opportunities is by supporting Makiah Lyons, J.D., as an Equal Justice Works legal fellow at IDRA.

Makiah’s fellowship project aims to address school discipline policies and practices that disproportionately harm girls of color in Georgia and other southern states. Central to her fellowship is a legal youth participatory action research (LYPAR) project called the IDRA Safety, Dignity and Belonging Project. It is co-led by a team of youth researchers studying the school discipline experiences of Black girls in the Atlanta area.

While scholars and advocates have repeatedly sounded the alarm on the impact of punitive school discipline on Black girls and girls of color, as well as the need for an intersectional approach to ending school pushout, significant gaps remain in research, movement-building and other initiatives focused on these girls. The same harmful attitudes, policies and practices contributing to racialized school discipline outcomes also are indivisibly gendered.

For example, historically, many routine data collections and research have disaggregated data by race and gender separately rather than simultaneously. As a result, the discipline data of Black female students were collapsed into the data of Black students, including boys or girls of all races. In effect, collecting and disaggregating the data in this way renders invisible the experiences of Black girls and fails to consider that the experiences of Black girls are considerably different from those of Black boys and girls of other races (Crenshaw, 2015).

The youth participatory action research (YPAR) framework provides an opportunity to bridge this gap and to center and meaningfully consider youth as experts in their own experiences. This is especially important for marginalized and understudied groups like Black girls (Crenshaw, 2024). Rather than rendering young girls of color as the subjects to be researched, YPAR recognizes their power and agency to interrogate, analyze and organize around the issues that impact them intimately.

This project also includes a legal facet, recognizing that young people, their families and communities navigate discriminatory school discipline issues largely without any assistance from lawyers or formally-trained advocates. This is both a civil rights and access to justice issue.

The IDRA Safety, Dignity and Belonging Project is well underway. Currently, the youth research team has assembled for workshop and community-building sessions, creating shared language and understanding around various types of discrimination in schools like racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism; mapping out school pushout for Black girl students including the impacts of adultification, racial and gender bias and adultism; and receiving IDRA training in research methodology.

While addressing the discriminatory discipline that Black girls face requires deep, coordinated investment within and across several systems, like districts, schools, community centers and programs, and juvenile courts, research like the IDRA Safety, Dignity and Belonging Project helps us bridge our gaps in understanding of not only who is punished and excluded in school, but why and how this impacts Black girl students.

The project also provides systems actors like school staff and administrators, advocates, attorneys and judges actionable insight into the experiences of Black girls in schools.

Finally, and most critically, the project creates a supportive space for Black girls to exercise their agency in creating a more just world. We believe this is the dream those Black women we celebrate this month were fighting for.

Resources

Blake, J.J., Keith, V.M., Luo, W., Le, H., & Salter, P. (2017). The Role of Colorism in Explaining African American Females’ Suspension Risk. School Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 32, No.1: 118-130.

Crenshaw, K.W., Ocen, P., & Nanda, J. (2015). Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected. Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies.

Crenshaw, K.W., & Evans-Winters, V.E. (2024). Black Girls Youth Participatory Action Research and Pedagogies. Journal of African American Women and Girls in Education, Vol. 3, No. 2; 114-118.

Epstein, R., Blake, J.J., & González, T. (2017). Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood. Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. https://genderjusticeandopportunity.georgetown.edu/report/girlhood-interrupted-the-erasure-of-black-girls-childhood/

Erickson, J.H., & Pearson, J. (2022). Excluding Whom? Race, Gender, and Suspension in High School. Education and Urban Society, Vol. 54, No. 4; 389-422.

GAO. (2024). Nationally, Black Girls Receive More Frequent and More Severe Discipline in Schools than Other Girls. GAO-24-106787. Government Accountability Office. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106787

IDRA. (2024). Equity in Dress Codes, resource webpage. https://www.idra.org/support/equity-in-dress-codes/

Lehmann, P.S., & Meldrum, R.C. (2018). School Suspension in Florida: The Interactive Effects of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Academic Achievement. Justice Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3: 479-512.

Onyeka-Crawford, A., Patrick, K., & Chaudhry, N. (2019). Stopping School Pushout: Overview and Key Findings. National Women’s Law Center. https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/final_nwlc_Gates_GirlsofColor.pdf

Morgan Craven, J.D., is the IDRA national director of policy, advocacy and community engagement. Comments and questions may be directed to her via email at morgan.craven@idra.org. Makiah Lyons, J.D., is an Equal Justice Works Fellow hosted by IDRA. Comments and questions may be directed to her via email at makiah.lyons@idra.org. This article also includes reflections from Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D., Lizdelia Piñón, Ed.D., DeAndrea Byrd, and Kaci Wright.

[© 2025, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the February edition of the IDRA Newsletter. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]