Suspended Education : School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice

How the historic resistance to racial desegregation in schools led to the over-punishment of students todayEvery year, millions of public school students are suspended.This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve their behavior.Instead, suspension disrupts their education, harming the students, their families, and their schools.Black students suffer most within this broken system, experiencing a far greater risk of school punishment and the significant harms that accompany it.Many activists and scholars have considered how school punishment increases racial inequity, but few have thought to ask why.Why do we punish students the way we do, and why have we allowed this harmful practice to impact the lives of our nation’s children?In Suspended Education, Aaron Kupchik takes readers to the root of the issue.Suspensions were not intended as a behavior management tool.Instead, they were designed to remove unwanted students from the classroom.Through s