NPR

Every couple of years, we learn about how students are being treated across every public school in the country. Now, it comes from a U.S. Department of Education survey called the Civil Rights Data Collection. NPR's Jonaki Mehta has been in touch with experts who have started wrapping their heads around the latest data about the 2023-24 school year.

Black students and kids with disabilities are some of the most likely to face suspensions, and that has been a pattern for a long time. But in the 2023 to '24 school year, it got worse.

I talked to Dan Losen of the National Center for Youth Law. He studies school discipline, and he likes to think about suspensions in the number of school days lost. About a decade ago, he says students missed 11 million days of school in a year because of suspensions, and now that's risen to 14 million days. And Black students lost over four times as many days of school than their white peers, and students with disabilities made up nearly a third of students who were suspended out of school. And Losen works with districts across the country and says he's found that most kids get kicked out of school for what he calls minor offenses.