Expulsions Funneling Latinos into the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Boston—Recent school data shows that Latino students run a higher risk of permanent expulsion when compared to their white peers. Latinos experience harsher means of discipline, which experts say is linked to a decreased graduation rate and potential criminal involvement.

If expelled, general education students lose the chance to receive public education in Massachusetts. These rigorous laws are set to change come 2014, but for now they are still in place.

 “In Massachusetts kids of any age [can] be expelled forever with no educational services and no right to ever come back to school,” said Isabel Raskin, an educational attorney at the Suffolk University Juvenile Justice Center.

Latino students receive almost twice as many permanent expulsions than do white students. According to 2011 statistics, Latino students were suspended just as much as other students, but the difference in permanent expulsions was clear. White student expulsions within the last school year were much less than the Latino expulsions.

Even more, Latino girls were expelled almost four times as much as white girls. “[The issue] is definitely prominent and you see a break down on racial lines and to add another layer of complexity to it, you could talk about suspensions by gender,” said Nakisha Lewis, Program Manager at the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

With a higher rate of expulsion comes a higher chance of contact with the justice system, explained Lewis. “We’re setting up students to become offenders of some kind, once we just use suspension as one of our only means of discipline,” she said.

Raskin concluded that a reason behind the high rates of expulsion could be a lack of resources. She said many schools might suspend or expel students because they have no other means of discipline. “[They] don't have the resources to do mediation, to do positive behavioral support, so [they] suspend kids,” she said.

She also mentioned that a reason why Latino, or other minorities, run a higher risk of suspension is the cultural barrier. She said that there could be a potential misinterpretation of behaviors. “But there is sort of an issue with that about what it means to be disrespectful, to be threatening, that might be misconstrued by a teacher of a different race.”

Recent allegations put Fall River under a Federal Investigation for suspending Black and Latino students at a higher rate than their white peers. But the scope of the issue seems to spread farther than one school district. Lewis explained that Massachusetts ranks among the top ten in terms of out-school-suspensions. “When you look at those numbers… you see that the majority of those suspensions are for Black and Latino students.”

Fall River is just one example of the racial disparities prominent in schools across the state. Data from the most recent school year shows discipline periods for the same offense often depend on the race of the students involved. “There is a lot of disproportionality and it’s certainly not just limited to Fall River,” said Raskin.

According to a study released by the Civil Rights Project in August—the same study supporting the allegations against Fall River—in 2009, Latino students were three times more likely to get suspended than white students. The study, which takes into account total suspensions and enrollment, proved that Massachusetts has one of the highest rates in suspension of Latino students, trailing only after Connecticut.

Both Worcester and Holyoke appeared in the nation’s top ten highest suspending districts for Latino students. And Boston, according to Lewis, doesn’t fall far back. “Boston being the largest urban district within the commonwealth has one of the highest rates in suspensions for Latino males,” she added.

Lewis linked this rate to the decreased Latino graduation rate in Massachusetts. Studies confirm that while white males have an 83 percent graduation rate, only about half of all Latino students manage to graduate.

“Massachusetts has historically ranked high in graduation…however there is still this mist that needs to be debunked that Massachusetts is outperforming the nation in all the areas of educational progress, particularly as it relates to their Latino male students,” said Lewis.

Studies show that Latino girls are also at a high risk of suspension. For instance, in cases involving alcohol possession, Latino girls were banned from school an average of ten days, while white girls only missed five. When it came to drinking alcohol in school, white girls were suspended for five days, but Latino girls lost eight days of class.

JC Considine, Director of Board and Media Relations at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, stressed that school discipline is a local matter. He said the state urges districts to provide alternate means of education for suspended kids, but it all comes down to each district.

“Local educational leaders should determine how this might be delivered, whether in an alternative setting, school or program, or through home tutoring,” said Considine.

He also mentioned the change in the Massachusetts expulsion law—which will take effect in July of 2014—will require that districts provide means of education for students who have been suspended from school for disciplinary reasons.

But Lewis said the first step in fixing racial disparities is identifying the problem. “What you want to do is peel the layers back and look at what level we are achieving at because ... we really want to compare ourselves to ourselves,” she said.

She added that it is necessary to compare the graduation rate for students by race in order to pinpoint the problem areas and target them specifically. In her opinion, that is the only way to tell whether or not the whole student body is receiving fair education.

Raskin agreed, stating that a comparison of graduation rates across the years can provide insight into the data. 

“It’s the same years that crime is going down, that there’s all this zero tolerance, so if it’s working so well why are there more kids?” she asked. “Did kids become that more violent in school or is there something else going on?”