Disability Futures

Black students made up just 18 percent of students in the public schools sampled by the New York Times in 2012, but “they accounted for 35 percent of those suspended once” and 39 percent of those expelled — examining federal data, the Times also noted that “nationwide, more than 70 percent of students involved in arrests or referrals to court are black or Hispanic.” Even black preschoolers were not exempt: They made up the same 18 percent of the student population, but constituted half of all suspensions.

The study, which surveyed over 60,000 students in more than 6,000 schools across the country, determined that the poorer the neighborhood a school is in, the more likely it is that students in that school are suspended or arrested for bad behavior and the less likely their school is to recommend any type of behavioral therapy. The reverse was also true: the richer and whiter a school was, the more likely the school was to refer white students who misbehaved to more complex interventions.

In other words, schools and the solutions they pose to common problems are increasingly separate and unequal. 

Furthermore:

An American Psychological Association study found that black boys are perceived as older and less innocent than their white peers, and some studies indicate teachers can suffer from the fundamental attribution error, attributing minority children’s misbehavior to different causes than they do white children’s. Ramey notes how one study found that schools blame “poor parenting, cultural deficiencies, and poor character” for bad behavior among racial minority children, and see that behavior as permanent and leading almost inexorably to involvement with the criminal justice system.