WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department has issued guidance urging schools to stop what it calls "racial balancing" in student discipline policies, prompting concerns that the Trump administration will make it harder to address longstanding racial disparities in school discipline.
Federal civil rights data shows Black students are disciplined at disproportionately high rates. An Education Department report released in 2023 found Black public preschool children received out-of-school suspensions at a rate nearly twice their enrollment.
Kindergarten student Trenton Allison gives Jada Huss a hug Aug. 12 for the first day of school at West Elementary School in Kings Mountain, N.C.
The new guidance says schools cannot modify discipline policies simply to reduce such racial disparities.
A school's decision "to change its discipline policies with the purpose of avoiding or reducing racial disparities in discipline constitutes race discrimination," the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights said in a letter dated Tuesday.
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It said "racial balancing" constitutes discrimination and schools must ensure students are not treated differently because of race.
The guidance follows the department's decision last month to remove several "disparate impact" regulations that for decades prohibited policies and practices with discriminatory effects that are often unintended.
President Donald Trump acted against diversity initiatives, which he calls discriminatory against white people and males. Civil rights advocates say Trump's actions roll back social progress by removing practices aimed at helping marginalized groups.
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Eric Duncan, education equity advocacy group EdTrust's director of P-12 policy, criticized the latest guidance.
"You cannot address racial disparities in school discipline by telling schools to ignore race," he said. "Black students have long faced some of the harshest discipline in our nation's schools."
Data from the 2023 report also showed Black boys were nearly twice as likely as white boys to receive an out-of-school suspension or expulsion in K-12 public schools, while Black girls were nearly twice as likely to receive one or more in-school suspensions, one or more out-of-school suspensions and expulsions than white girls.
