• By Nickell Brown & Makiah Lyons, J.D. • IDRA Newsletter • February 2025 •
In August of 2024, the National Black Women’s Justice Institute (NBWJI) introduced the Black Girls’ Pushout and Criminalization in Schools Data Hub. This tool analyzes the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) to illuminate the racial disparities in school discipline for female students.
The data hub tracks nine kinds of discipline, including expulsions, in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions and school-related arrests, which we focus on here.
As the four students in the IDRA Safety, Dignity and Belonging Project examine the school discipline experiences of Black girls in Atlanta-area schools, the data hub is an important tool.
Between the years 2011 and 2018, the institute found that Black girls were the only group of girls to be overrepresented in every type of disciplinary action.
The new data hub is engaging and accessible, and it gives us real insight into Black female school discipline experience across the country and in Georgia, more specifically. Following are some data snapshots we found interesting.
Expulsions – Expulsions occur when a student is removed from school for more than a school quarter or semester. In the 2017-18 school year, Black girls received the most expulsions of all girl students. In Georgia public schools specifically, expulsion rates for Black females were almost three times higher than that of their white female classmates and over 3.5 times higher than Latinas.
In-School Suspensions – In-school suspensions (ISS) occur when students are removed from their regular classroom for at least half a school day for disciplinary purposes. From 2011 to 2018, the rates of ISS of most female populations steadily declined, suggesting that schools issued ISS consequences to girls less frequently.
However, while the total number of ISS assignments for girls decreased from 2011 to 2018, the overrepresentation of Black girls in ISS remained consistent during that time. In the 2017-18 school year, rates for Black girls in Georgia’s public schools were over 2.5 times higher than white girls and nearly two times higher than their Latina classmates.
Out of School Suspensions – Like in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions for most female students steadily declined during this time. But Black girls had the highest rates by far.
In Georgia’s public schools during the 2017-18 school year, out-of-school suspension rates for Black girls in Georgia’s public schools were almost five times higher than their white female classmates.
Arrests – The rates of school-related arrests of Black girls declined significantly between the 2013-14 and 2017-18 school years. In Georgia’s public schools during the 2017-18 school year, school-related arrest rates for Black girls were over three times higher than both their white and Latina classmates.
Of note, the rates of school-related arrests for Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander girls exploded, nearly tripling between the 2015-16 and 2017-18 school years.
In September of 2024, the Government Accountability Office also released a report finding that, among female students, Black girls had the highest rates of exclusionary discipline and faced more frequent, harsher forms of discipline than other girls, even for similar infractions. (See related article.)
Black girls, just as anyone else, deserve fair treatment. The experiences of Black girls should be heavily discussed in the school discipline conversation, where they are underrepresented but extremely over-disciplined. Everyone deserves to have the same opportunities while being at school and should not have to be troubled by excessive disciplinary actions based on their gender or the color of their skin.
This data hub is an exciting new interactive tool that enables students, educators, researchers and advocates to better understand the data as they work for equal treatment of Black girls in school.
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. Nickell Brown is a high school student and is one of the student researchers in IDRA’s Safety, Dignity and Belonging Project.
[© 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.]
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