What youth and civil rights advocates have called a decades-long suspension epidemic in California schools is showing signs of subsiding, with a new report finding that suspensions have dropped significantly across all student groups over a recent five-year period.
But alarming levels of lost days of instruction from suspensions remain, especially among African-Americans, Native Americans and students with disabilities, according to the report released this week by UCLA’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies. The report also identified troubling trends in middle schools and rural districts.
California K-12 students lost an estimated 763,690 days of instruction due to suspensions in 2016-17, the most recent year covered by the report. This represents a drop of nearly half from the 2011-12 school year, when students lost 1,419,404 days….