Why Black students are still disciplined at higher rates: Takeaways from AP's report

Racial differences in how schools discipline students received new attention 10 years ago, during a national reckoning with racial injustice.

A decade later, change has been slow to materialize.

In many schools around the country, Black students have been more likely to receive punishments that remove them from the classroom, including suspensions, expulsions and being transferred to alternative schools.

A decade ago, those differences became the target of a newly energized reform movement spurred by the same reckoning that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. For many advocates, students and educators, pursuing racial justice meant addressing disparate outcomes for Black youth that begin in the classroom, often through harsh discipline and underinvestment in low-income schools.

The movement elevated the concept of the “school-to-prison pipeline” — the notion that being kicked out of school, or dropping out, increases the chance of arrest and imprisonment years later.

The Associated Press reviewed discipline data in key states to see how much progress has been made. Here's what journalists found.

Gaps have narrowed, but Black students are still kicked out at higher rates

The past decade has seen some progress in lowering suspension rates for Black students. But massive disparities persist, according to AP's review of discipline data in key states.

In Missouri, for example, an AP analysis found Black students served 46% of all days in suspension in the 2013-2014 school year — the year Michael Brown was shot and killed by police in that state, days after he completed high school. Nine years later, the percentage had dropped to 36%, according to state data obtained via a public records request. Both numbers far