Washington, D.C. — In a groundbreaking survey that shines additional light on disparities in public education, federal officials released new data on Tuesday that shows minority students are more likely to face discipline and less likely to have experienced teachers or access to rigorous courses than non-minority students.
At the same time, Department of Education officials stopped short of blaming the disparities on racism or poverty, pointing instead to schools and districts that had bucked the trend as evidence that elimination of the disparities is not an insurmountable task.
“The answer is out there,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a news conference on Tuesday at Howard University to announce the new data. “We just have to take to scale what’s working.”
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali said the data — officially known as Part II of the 2009-10 Civil Rights Data Collection, or CRDC — highlights the need for further study in order to formulate good policy and successful interventions. But the data alone do not prove anything systemic or necessarily warrant civil rights investigations such as others her office has done in recent years.
“It really is about self-analysis, asking why these patterns exist in your school, in your district, in your state and what can be done collectively to change them,” Ali said.
Among other things, the new federal data released Tuesday shows that:
n African-American students, especially boys, were more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their peers, making up 18 percent of the students in the survey sample but 35 percent of the students suspended once and 39 percent of those expelled.
