Students deserve safe schools. Teachers deserve orderly classrooms. And race should not determine how children experience either. On these fundamental prerequisites, the U.S. Department of Education and I agree.
Unfortunately, the consensus ends there.
In its recent Dear Colleague Letter, the U.S. Department of Education warns schools against considering race in student disciplinary decisions. At its core, the guidance prioritizes a policy’s neutrality over scrutiny of its outcomes.
Discipline policy does not become discriminatory simply because it produces different outcomes by race, the department argues. Schools must apply their rules evenhandedly and cannot treat individual students differently based on race.
That principle is important. But the guidance goes further by treating efforts to examine racial disparities and decisions informed by those disparities as themselves discriminatory.
This is where the Department of Education gets it wrong.
Disparate outcomes do not, by themselves, prove discrimination—but neither are they meaningless. When racial disparities persist across schools, districts, states, and generations—particularly in disciplinary categories governed by subjective judgment—they become evidence of a pattern worth examining.
Discipline disparities are not exclusive
Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights show that Black students bear a disproportionate share of school discipline. In fact, relative to their overall school enrollment, Black boys are roughly 1.5 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers.
Disproportionality is not exclusive to Black students, and raw percentages alone cannot tell us why these patterns exist, but they are critical data points worthy of examination.
Because discipline is not a straight line from behavior to consequence.
Between those two points lies a chain of human actions: what behaviors get noticed, how those behaviors are interpreted, whether a teacher intervenes, whether a student is referred to an administrator, how the offense is categorized, and what consequence is ultimately imposed.
A discipline code may be race-neutral on paper, but its enforcement is driven by people whose decisions are inevitably shaped by interpretation and judgment.
Some infractions are relatively objective. A physical altercation happened, or it did not.
However, whether a student was “disrespectful,” “defiant,” “disruptive,” or “insubordinate” is often subjective.
Talking back can become defiance. Frustration can become disrespect. A classroom disruption that could have been redirected may instead result in an office referral.
No single subjective decision necessarily proves racial discrimination. But when individual decisions consistently produce vastly different outcomes that manifest starkly along the lines of race and gender, asking “why” is not discrimination—it is necessary scrutiny.
The question is not simply who receives consequences. It is how often students encounter the disciplinary system relative to their enrollment, for what behaviors, under what circumstances, and at what point adult discretion transforms ordinary student behavior into punishable misconduct.
Schools need more information, not less
Schools should be able to ask whether certain teachers generate unusually high numbers of referrals. They should be able to determine whether students from different racial groups receive different consequences for comparable conduct.
They should examine whether suspensions are concentrated among subjective offenses rather than serious safety violations. And they should be able to ask whether stronger classroom management, culturally responsive practices, restorative approaches, or better implementation of tiered supports could resolve behavior before exclusionary discipline becomes necessary.
None of this requires racial quotas. It does not require administrators to excuse misconduct because a student is Black. And it certainly does not require schools to tolerate violence or sacrifice classroom safety to make their discipline numbers look better.
It requires schools to pay attention to the outcomes their systems produce.
That distinction gets lost when race-conscious analysis is treated as equivalent to race-based treatment. The two are not the same.
Treating a child differently because of race is discrimination. Examining racial disparities to determine whether a system is treating children equitably is an analysis. The former violates the principle of equal treatment. The latter can be necessary to determine whether equal treatment actually exists.
This matters because systems are not merely collections of intentions. They are collections of policies, practices, decisions, conditions, human interactions, and outcomes.
A rule can be race-neutral on its face, yet the decisions made under it still warrant scrutiny.
Breaking the thermometer
By restricting how schools can respond to racial disparities in their discipline data, the federal government risks breaking the thermometer to bring down the fever. The data cannot tell us, on its own, that discrimination occurred. But they can tell us where to look.
Perhaps an investigation reveals legitimate differences in student behavior. Perhaps it reveals inconsistent implementation of discipline policies. Perhaps teachers need stronger classroom-management support. Perhaps subjective offenses are being applied too broadly. And perhaps, in some places, race is affecting how behavior is perceived and punished.
We cannot know which explanation is correct if asking the question itself is treated as discriminatory.
I agree with the Department of Education that race should never determine how a child experiences school discipline. Where we disagree is whether achieving that reality requires schools to ignore race when evaluating how discipline systems actually operate.
A policy’s neutrality should protect students from being treated differently because of their race. It should not prevent us from scrutinizing what the policy produces in practice.
As federal enforcement narrows, the critical distinction between race-based treatment and race-conscious analysis becomes even more vital. The responsibility for this analysis now sits squarely with state agencies, school boards, and superintendents.
Local leaders retain the full authority to examine their own systems. They must find the courage to read the thermometer, ask the hard questions, and ensure that equal treatment is practiced, not just on paper.
The image above was created with AI.
