Recently, an agreement was reached between the New York State Attorney General and Buffalo Public Schools, after the attorney general found the district disciplined students of color and students with disabilities more than other students. The report also found families who do not speak English as a first language didn't have the same access to disciplinary information and that some parents who spoke out faced retaliation.
While the remedies are a win for Buffalo Public Schools families, the issue of marginalized students facing more punishment than their classmates is a national issue. Additionally, multi-marginalized students often face the greatest discrimination in punishment. A national report from 2018 showed that Black students with disabilities lost an average of 77 more days of education to punishment than white students with disabilities. In New York, the average difference was 34.9 days.
At the same time, federal-level protections for students of color with disabilities are weakening. In this episode of the Disabilities Beat, we speak with a national expert who believes more and more, fixing problems with inequitable punishment is going to be left to the states. And while one of the remedies for Buffalo Public Schools will be sharing more data on educational time lost due to discipline — not all schools and states across the country have the same access to information, and that could become even more limited in the future.
TRANSCRIPT:
Emyle Watkins: Hi, I'm Emyle Watkins, and this is the Disabilities Beat.
Recently, the New York State Attorney General announced an agreement to remedy issues with Buffalo Public Schools after they found the district disproportionately disciplined students of color and students with disabilities, had insufficient language access for non English speakers in the disciplinary process and retaliated against parents who complained.
And while the announcement was a win for local parents, the situation at hand is part of a larger national issue: accountability for disproportionate treatment of students of color with disabilities.
Mia Ives-Rublee: I am not surprised that this has happened.
Emyle Watkins: Mia Ives-Rublee is the senior director for the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress.
The State Attorney General separates data into students of color and students with disabilities as two different groups. But as Ives-Rublee explains, those who share both identities especially face significant disproportionate treatment nationally.
Mia Ives-Rublee: We know for a fact that disabled students of color, particularly Black disabled students, are at risk of being over-identified for specific services, including special education services and behavioral services. We also know that they are often misidentified, and early on, and so it means that they miss out on certain services as well. And so this has been a historic problem for a long time.
Emyle Watkins: And it's one that the federal government has tried to tackle.
Mia Ives-Rublee: One of the things that they intentionally put in place, the Department of Education, was that there was a requirement to evaluate whether specific students who are a part of a protected class were being disproportionately identified or disproportionately punished.
Emyle Watkins: Schools would report data that would help evaluate if students of color with disabilities face disproportionality, as it's called. That data would help decide if schools would be required to use some of their Individuals With Disabilities Education Act or IDEA, funding towards targeted interventions to reduce disproportionate treatment.
Mia Ives-Rublee: We found out that a lot of schools weren't collecting the data that we needed, and that meant that it was very, very hard for us to be able to gauge whether students were being disproportionately punished.
Emyle Watkins: According to Ives-Rublee, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would have firmed up data reporting requirements. However, that rule hasn't been fully realized, and under the Trump administration, the Department of Education has sought to remove data collection related to disproportionality.
Mia Ives-Rublee: The federal government, right now, under this administration, is really trying to pull back on any accountability, and the way that they are doing that is hiding data
Emyle Watkins: Coming back to Buffalo Public Schools, one of the major remedies is the district improving how it reports suspension data across demographics. Parent advocate Jessica Bauer Walker explains how this helps advocates understand the scale of the issues.
Jessica Bauer Walker: For instance, the reporting of the suspended versus unsuspended rate, making it easier to see some of these intersecting points, more real time data, numbers of days that students are suspended, which is a question that we've asked for such a long time. You know, the long term suspensions could be anywhere from six to 180 days. So saying there's one suspension there doesn't really give us good data.
Emyle Watkins: A national report from 2018 titled "Disabling Punishment: The Need for Remedies to the Disparate Loss of Instruction Experienced by Black Students with Disabilities" showed that nationally, Black students with disabilities lost an average of 77 more days of instruction than white students with disabilities. In New York, the average difference was 34.9 days.
So while families enrolled in Buffalo Public Schools may see better data down the road with relation to suspensions, other families across the U.S. may continue to see less data, depending on their state, especially for students of color with disabilities, who face the greatest barriers.
Mia Ives-Rublee: It's going to be up to the states, and that's really unfortunate for students who are living in states that don't want to be held accountable or who don't want to provide the services that those students need.
Emyle Watkins: You can listen to the Disabilities Beat segment on demand, view a transcript and plain language description for every episode on our website at btpm.org. I'm Emyle Watkins, thanks for listening.
