Black girls face more discipline and more severe punishments in public schools than girls from other racial backgrounds, according to a groundbreaking new report set for release Thursday by a congressional watchdog.
The report, shared exclusively with NPR, took nearly a year-and-a-half to complete and comes after several Democratic congressional members requested the study. Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, later with support from Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, asked the Government Accountability Office in 2022 to take on the report.
Over the course of the 85-page report, the GAO says it found that in K-12 public schools, Black girls had the highest rates of so-called “exclusionary discipline,” such as suspensions and expulsions. Overall, the study found that during the 2017-18 school year, Black girls received nearly half of these punishments, even as they represent only 15% of girls in public schools.
Having been in an inner city school, this is entirely unsurprising. Between economics, demographics, and culture, black people tend to get the short end of the stick. Poorer on average, less educated on average, and surrounded by other students with similar qualities and insecurities. Controlling a classroom like that, one that was manufactured by bigots to be uncontrollable, is impossible. I can only hope that this leads to restructuring and systemic reform. Jim Crow’s aftershocks should have been dealt with long, long ago.