Executive Summary (excerpt)

During the 2015–16 school year, according to national estimates released by the U.S. Department of Education in May 2020, there were 11,392,474 days of instruction lost due to out-of-school suspension. That is the equivalent of 62,596 years of instruction lost. The counts of days of lost instruction were collected and reported for nearly every school and district by the U.S. Department of Education. For the very first time, one can see the impact of out-of-school suspensions on days of lost instruction for every student group in every district in the nation. Considering the hardships all students are experiencing during the pandemic, including some degree of suspended education, this shared experience of having no access to the classroom should raise awareness of how missing school diminishes the opportunity to learn. The stark disparities in lost instruction due to suspension described in this report also raise the question of how we can close the achievement gap if we do not close the discipline gap. The racially disparate harm done by the loss of valuable in-person instruction time when schools closed in March 2020 is even deeper for those students who also lost access to mental health services and other important student support services. The same losses, plus the stigma of punishment, is what suspended students experience…

In compliance with the UC Open Access Policy, this report has been made available on eScholarship: escholarship.org/uc/item/7hm2456z