Nationwide Survey of State Education Agencies’ Online School Disciplinary Data for Students with Disabilities (Summer 2014)

UCLA Civil Rights Project’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies has extracted information from all 50 State Education Agency (SEA) websites and Washington, DC to compile publicly-reported school disciplinary data below. The findings are shown in the downloadable spreadsheet with summaries of student disciplinary data for each state. Information in the table was corroborated by SEA staff. Although most states offer additional data on disciplinary actions upon request, this web-based tool only uses data readily available to the public online.

This Survey is limited to what reviewers found to have been publicly reported on each state’s website. Thirty-four states did not publicly report any school discipline data. Furthermore, only eight states disaggregate disciplinary data by race in their SEA website reporting. 

Widespread state non-compliance with federal law found: As indicated in Table 1, 49 states failed to report discipline data for students with disabilities despite the following explicit federal requirement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): “(a) In general Each State that receives assistance under this subchapter, and the Secretary of the Interior, shall provide data each year to the Secretary of Education and the public on the following: (1)…(D) The incidence and duration of disciplinary actions by race, ethnicity, limited English proficiency status, gender, and disability category, of children with disabilities, including suspensions of 1 day or more.”  

2O U.S.C. Sec. 1418 (a)(1)(D) [emphasis added]. 

Table 1. Overview of Discipline Data Reporting across States (excluding Washington, DC)

Downloadable Spreadsheet (located on the right): 

The spreadsheet contains detailed information regarding data indicators, SEA contact information, and data notes. If available, we have provided a link to the data sources in the spreadsheet (indicated by a hyperlink).