The Obama administration attempted but failed to address disparities in school suspensions and expulsions for Black students. When analyzing preschool discipline data from the U.S. Department of Education, it shows that Black boys make up 18% of the male preschool enrollment, but 41% of male preschool suspensions, and Black girls make up 19% of female preschool enrollment, but 53% of female suspensions. This trend continues throughout grade school, eventually leading to a significant loss of learning time in over-policed schools. The report found that in some school districts, more than 1 out of every 20 Black middle and high school students were arrested.8  Students who are suspended from school “lose important instructional time, are less likely to graduate on time, and more likely to repeat a grade, drop out of school, and become involved in the juvenile justice system.”9 Disapirites in suspensions are exacerbated when disability status is measured with race and ethnicity.21 

Though public schools were desegregated in 1954, Black students are still five times as likely as white students to attend schools that are highly segregated by race, with extreme levels of poverty.10  The U.S. Department of Education has produced countless reports that show disparities in education for Black students. These reports demonstrate that Black students are largely in schools with less qualified teachers earning lower salaries, less likely to be enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) courses, less likely to be kindergarten-ready, less likely to be college-ready, and have the lowest levels of income amongst races regardless of educational attainment. 

Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there were over a hundred higher education institutions dedicated to serving Black Americans. These colleges and universities were some of the only post-secondary institutions Black Americans could attend because of legal segregation. The Higher Education Act of 1965 honored these institutions, deeming them Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). HBCUs have many accomplishments that helped shape America today. Over 80% of Black Americans with medicine and dentistry degrees attended HBCUs; three-fourths of all Black Americans with a doctorate, three-fourths of all Black officers in the armed forces, and four-fifths of all Black federal judges attended HBCUs; and most Black students with bachelor degrees in life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering attended HBCUs.11 But in a post-Civil Rights era America, between new collegiate options, a dramatic reduction in federal funding, and philanthropic discrimination, HBCUs today are struggling to remain open. In the 1970s, between 75% and 85% of Black Americans attending college were enrolled at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This rate has decreased dramatically to about 9% today.12

The Duke University study, What We Get Wrong About Closing The Racial Wealth Gap, found that “[a]t every level of educational attainment, the median wealth among black families is substantially lower than white families. White households with a bachelor’s degree or postgraduate education (such as with a Ph.D., MD, and JD) are more than three times as wealthy as black households with the same degree attainment.” The report further reveals that “on average, a black household with a college-educated head has less wealth than a white family whose head did not even obtain a high school diploma.”13 Black students are more likely to have student loan debt and more likely than white students to drop out of college because of financial instability.

In addition to being underserved in general subjects, Black students are also grossly lacking education about themselves. In 2015, the National Museum of African American History and Culture reported that U.S. history classrooms dedicate 8% to 9% of total class time to Black history.14 There are no national history standards, and the suggested national curriculum is largely ignored in favor of state-level standards. About a dozen states do not require teaching the Civil Rights Era, and nearly half of the states do not teach about racial segregation at all.

In 2020–21, students ages 3–21 who received special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) were 15% of all public school students. The most common disability was specific learning disabilities at 33%.19 Black students represented the second largest racial group of students with disabilities, at 17%, exceeding their overall percentage of the public school enrollment. Black students have been overrepresented in special education since the U.S. Office of Civil Rights started surveying school districts in 1968.20 Black students are twice as likely to be labeled as emotionally disturbed and three times as likely to be identified with an intellectual disabilities compared to white students.20 Black students placed in special education are also more likely to be taught in separate classrooms compared to white students even though research shows benefits to inclusive learning among peers who are not receiving special education services. White students with disabilities spend more than 80% of their school day in a general classroom while Black students only spend a third of their school day in a general classroom.20 

The latest blow to education for Black America is the COVID-19 pandemic. McKinsey & Company reported that, while Black students are most likely to continue remote learning, they are the least likely to have computers, internet access, and live contact with teachers at home. The lack of access to resources to learn from home has led to wider achievement gaps and increases in dropout rates. McKinsey & Company estimates that an additional 2% to 9% of high school students could drop out because of the coronavirus school closures—that equates to 232,000 students in the mildest scenario and as many as 1.1 million in the worst.15

The fight for basic education has been a lethal one, with countless Black schools being bombed and burned down across the country, including the recent burning of a historic Black schoolhouse in July of 2020, south of Nashville, TN, in Maury County.16 Because Black Americans are the only group in the U.S. that has had to fight legal discrimination in education at the local, state, and federal levels, as well as being victimized by white backlash as a result of simply trying to learn, Black Americans require a comprehensive education agenda:

• The U.S. Congress must enact a law placing a federal ban on all preschool and primary school suspensions and expulsions. 

• The U.S. President must sign an executive order making suspensions and expulsions a health crisis as it is a direct contradiction to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ education access and quality objectives for children. In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education, these agencies shall investigate the public school system’s role in lost wages for Black American families due to the educational and economic impacts of school suspensions and expulsions. The lost wages shall be recouped through a national scholarship and certification fund to help those families obtain free General Educational Development (GEDs), higher education, or certifications in any field of choice.

• The U.S. Department of Education’s $1 billion dollar budget for counselors, nurses, and mental health professionals must reserve half of its funding for specialists in race-based trauma to reflect the national public school student population being nearly half non-white.

• The U.S. Congress must enact a law placing a federal ban on law enforcement in public schools and zero-tolerance policies. These efforts shall decriminalize student behavior that is largely a response to living in extreme poverty and prevent minors from being charged as adults.

• The U.S. Department of Education must work with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to double funding for Family Resource Centers in predominantly Black census tracts to increase supportive services that can help mitigate nuisance behavior associated with zero-tolerance policies. The $1.7 billion Social Services Block Grant shall prioritize these same census tracts.

• The U.S. Department of Justice must investigate its department and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to identify any correlations of the school-to-prison pipeline for people who have been or are justice-involved. They must develop remedies for justice for those directly impacted and/or their descendants. These remedies shall include—but not be limited to—full-ride scholarships to HBCUs, student loan forgiveness, and recompense to be used for private educational purposes.
  
  
• The U.S. Congress must create the U.S. Division on National History Standards as a division of the U.S. Department of Education to create national history standards. The Division shall employ experts on Black history, education, and scholarship. The Division shall maintain national history standards with annual recommendations for necessary changes. These standards must include a fact-based, comprehensive, and required teaching of Black history in the U.S. This curriculum must include the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Slavery and the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, redlining, the Civil Rights Era, the crack epidemic, mass incarceration, police violence, the lineage wealth gap, and more. It shall also include thorough teaching of Black Americans’ contributions to the U.S., such as inventions, arts and culture, achievements in political organizing, and more. The U.S. Department of Education must monitor the implementation of national history standards until 100% of U.S. history is inclusive of Black American history and assessed across the country.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education must limit the American Families subsidized tuition spending to HBCUs and ADOS students and expand it to full-ride scholarships instead of the proposed two-year coverage.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice must investigate all public post-secondary institutions for their role in slavery and segregation. The penalty shall include extracting endowments from schools like Georgetown that were built by slaves and transferring funds into new endowments for HBCUs that enroll and serve the communities they were originally meant to. This investigation shall also target Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) that potentially participated in the slave trade and segregation.
  
  
• The U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy must collaborate with the U.S. Department of Education to create a robust plan to eliminate the digital divide between Black working-age adults and the rest of the population. This includes free access to obtain equipment, skills training, licensing, and guaranteed employment as automation replaces low-skill tasks in the workforce.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education must incentivize public schools to adopt the community school model, where schools provide resources in and out of school time in predominantly Black census tracts. The $443 million budget request must be limited to these census tracts to fully fund quality childcare before and after school, in addition to enrichment programs. All community schools in these census tracts must be given national reporting standards to show effectiveness. Each school should follow similar school-time staffing ratios, utilize community vendors, and be available to surrounding neighborhoods regardless of school enrollment.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education’s $50 billion infrastructure investment for “job-creating investments in cutting-edge, energy-efficient, resilient, and innovative school buildings with technology and labs”17 must prioritize renovations for former Black, Colored, and Negro Schools and schools with predominately Black American student populations.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education must collaborate with the Department of Justice to create a student exoneration model that provides recompense in the form of scholarships to any public or private post-secondary institution for students who were wrongfully expelled. Black Americans represent 50% of the 2,820 exonerations since 1989.18 A thorough investigation would show that students require similar justice.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education must transfer its multi-million dollar investment in Minority Science and Engineering Improvement to HBCUs or Predominantly Black Institutions to start or upgrade their Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) degree programs. Black Americans are underemployed and underrepresented in STEAM careers while other racial minority groups are over-employed and overrepresented.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education must create a national plan to increase the percentage of Black teachers in public schools. This plan should have funding incentives for schools hiring more Black teachers, salary bonuses for teachers in low performing schools, and free educational programs and certifications for aspiring Black teachers.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) must create an assessment within their competitive grant process that measures racial sensitivity and inclusivity.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) must assist public school districts with the highest racial disparities until they are completely self-sufficient.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) must create national standards for special education eligibility that considers linguistic and cultural differences among Black American students and a thorough disciplinary protocol that discourages criminalization of students with disabilities.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education must create a checks and balances system for school staff prescribing drug treatment to students that includes parental, doctor, and other consents before medicating students.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of Education must create a template for and help fund public school districts partnering with local governments to increase educational outcomes and close achievement gaps. The template should include shared use agreements for facilities, parks, after-school programs, libraries, tutoring programs, and social or family services.

References

1. Dalton, Karen C. Chambers. 1991. “The Alphabet Is an Abolitionist” Literacy and African Americans in the Emancipation Era. The Massachusetts Review. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25090304
   
   
2. Douglass, Frederick. 2008. In The Complete Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass: (An African American Heritage Book). Wilder Publications.

    

3. Tolley, Kim Tolley. 2016. Miseducation: A History of Ignorance-Making in America and Abroad. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    

4. The Missouri General Assembly. 1837. Negroes and Mulattoes.  The Missouri Secretary of State.

    

5. Johnson, C. S. 2014. Growing Up in the Black Belt, Negro Youth in the Rural South. American Council of Learned Societies.

    

6. 2019. National Achievement-Level Results. The Nation’s Report Card. U.S. Department of Education. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/.

    

7. 2011. Policy statement on discipline and the school-to-prison pipeline. 2021 NEA Annual Meeting. National Education Association. https://.nea.org/

    

8. 2020. National Report Calls Attention to Frequent Use of Suspension Contributing to Stark Inequities in the Opportunity to Learn. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA. https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/press-releases/press-releases-2020/national-report-calls-attention-to-frequent-use-of-suspension-and-impact-on-inequities-in-opportunity-to-learn
   
   
9. Mowicki, Jacqueline, Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with Disabilities. GAO. March 2018. Crisis Prevention. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-258.pdf. Accessed February 2022.

    

10. 2020. Schools are still segregated, and black children are paying a price. Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/publication/schools-are-still-segregated-and-black-children-are-paying-a-price/
    
    
11. Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Higher Education Desegregation. US Department of Education (ED). https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq9511.html
     
12. Daniel, James Rushing. 2016. Crisis at the HBCU. Composition Studies. University of Cincinnati on behalf of Composition Studies. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24859535
    
    
13. 2018. What We Get Wrong About Closing The Racial Wealth Gap. Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. https://socialequity.duke.edu
    
    
14. King, LaGarrett J. 2015. The Status of Black History in U.S. Schools and Society. National Museum of African American History and Culture. https://www.si.edu/museums/african-american-museum
    
    
15. Dorn, E., Sarakatsannis, J. & Hancock, B. 2020. COVID-19 and student learning in the United States: The hurt could last a lifetime. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/
    
    
16. Tiede, Rachel. 2020. Historic 1920s Black schoolhouse burned to the ground in Maury County. Fox 17 WZTV Nashville. https://fox17.com/news/local/historic-black-schoolhouse-burned-to-the-ground
    
    
17. 2021. Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Summary. U.S. Department of Education https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/tables.html
    
    
18. Selby, Daniele. 2021. 8 Facts You Should Know About Racial Injustice in the Criminal Legal System. Innocence Project. https://innocenceproject.org/facts-racial-discrimination-justice-system-wrongful-conviction-black-history-month
    
    
19. Students with Disabilities. National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgg/students-with-disabilities
    
    
20. National Education Association. 2007. Truth in Labeling: Disproportionality in Special Education.

     

21. The Understood Team. 2020. FAQs on Racial Disparities in Special Education and the “Significant Disproportionality” Rule. https://www.understood.org/en/community-events/blogs/the-inside-track/2018/05/23/faqs-on-racialdisparities-in-special-education-and-the-significant-disproportionality-rule