Huge disparities in student discipline, educational access found in U.S. DoE

The Office of Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Education today released a massive collection of data from the 2013-14 school year. Among the most troubling stats:

Black preschool children are 3.6 times as likely to be suspended as are white preschool students.

In kindergarten through the 12th grade, black students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended as are white students. 

Black students also are nearly twice as likely to be expelled—removed from school with no services—as are white students.

Students with disabilities are more than twice as likely as students without disabilities to be suspended in K-12 settings. They also represent two-thirds of students who are secluded from their classmates or restrained to prevent them from moving—even though they are only 12 percent of the overall student population.

More than half of high schools do not offer calculus, four in ten do not offer physics, more than one in four do not offer chemistry, and more than one in five do not offer Algebra II

(Algebra II? How are they not offering Algebra II??) 

There's plenty of analysis out there to read: EdWeek talks about disparities in outcomes and access; UPI talks racial disparity; Think Progress focuses on suspensions; and the Washington Post points out the school counselor gap: 850,000 students went to schools without a school counselor, and 1.6 million students went to a school with a law-enforcement officer, but no counselor.

Note further that this is aggregate data; district and school level data will be released in the fall at ocrdata.ed.gov.