OCTOBER 2020
Daniel J. Losen and Paul Martinez
Lost
Opportunities
How Disparate School Discipline Continues to
Drive Dierences in the Opportunity to Learn
LOST OPPORTUNITIES
Executive Summary
During the 2015–16 school year, according to national estimates released by the U.S. Department
of Education in May 2020, there were 11,392,474 days of instruction lost due to out-of-school
suspension. That is the equivalent of 62,596 years of instruction lost. The counts of days of lost
instruction were collected and reported for nearly every school and district by the U.S. Department
of Education. For the very first time, one can see the impact of out-of-school suspensions on days of
lost instruction for every student group in every district in the nation. Considering the hardships
all students are experiencing during the pandemic, including some degree of suspended education,
this shared experience of having no access to the classroom should raise awareness of how
missing school diminishes the opportunity to learn. The stark disparities in lost instruction due to
suspension described in this report also raise the question of how we can close the achievement gap
if we do not close the discipline gap.
The racially disparate harm done by the loss of valuable in-person instruction time when schools
closed in March 2020 is even deeper for those students who also lost access to mental health
services and other important student support services. The same losses, plus the stigma of
punishment, is what suspended students experience when removed from school for breaking a
rule, no maer how minor their misconduct.
According to experts, the coronavirus is likely more harmful to children from low-income families,
those with disabilities, and children of color. As Kathleen Minke, Executive Director of the
National Association of School Psychologists, recently wrote, “There is lile doubt that there will
be substantial increases in mental- and behavioral-health problems for students and adults when
schools reopen.… The effects will not be equally distributed.”
Coming on the heels of a massive loss
of instructional time, and of mental health and special education supports and services, we argue in
this report that the data describing the high rates of lost instruction and the inequitable disparate
impact of suspensions in these times of extreme stress should compel educators across the nation
to do more, once students are allowed to return, to reduce disciplinary exclusion from school. Like
our prior reports, the analysis presented here helps to convey how high and disparate levels of
exclusionary discipline in terms of days of lost instruction time contribute to large inequities in
educational opportunity.
The key findings of most significance in this report are:
• In many districts, secondary students lost over a year of instruction (per 100 enrolled
students). The disagregated district data showing the rates of lost instruction are the only
data of their kind available. The U.S. Department of Education provided the raw data from
nearly every school and district but not the comparable rates of lost instruction created for
this report.
• Rates of lost instruction reveal that due to out-of-school suspensions, students at the
secondary level lose instruction at rates that are five times higher than those at the
elementary level. The distinction between elementary and secondary rates, presented at
the national and state levels and for nearly every district in the nation, is unique to this
report. It also demonstrates how the traditional form of reporting the data for all grades,
k–12, obscures the highest rates and largest disparities.
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• National trend lines in rates of student suspension for 2015–16 show reduced reliance
by schools on both in- and out-of-school suspensions, and a slight narrowing of the
racial discipline gap, yet there are many districts in which student suspension rates are
much higher than the national average, and many also show rising rates and widening
racial disparities.
• This is the first report to document that students aending alternative schools experience
extraordinarily high and profoundly disparate rates of lost instruction.
• There is a widespread failure by districts to report data on school policing despite the
requirements of federal law. Specifically, over 60% of the largest school districts (including
New York City and Los Angeles) reported zero school-related arrests. The prevalence of
zeros sugests that much of the school-policing data from 2015–16 required by the federal
Office for Civil Rights (OCR) were incomplete or missing. OCR completed its data collection
from the 2017–18 school year in June 2019. As of August 6, 2020, none of the newer data
have been publicly reported by the U.S. Department of Education.
• In addition, this report indicates widespread noncompliance with the reporting
requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) that explicitly requires
public reporting of the collected school-policing data in annual state and district report
cards (in accord with the OCR data collection). As of July 2020, not one state had fully met
ESSA’s state and district report card obligation regarding their 2017–18 school-policing data.
In all districts, including those that show a decline in the student suspension rate, policymakers,
advocates, and educators must pay closer aention to the rates of lost instruction for students at
the secondary level, the use of suspension in alternative schools, and the use of referrals to law
enforcement as a response to student misconduct in school. The data analyzed in this report, all
of which was collected by the U.S. Department of Education, reveal deeply disturbing disparities
and demonstrate how the frequent use of suspension contributes to inequities in the opportunity
to learn.
Part I: The Disparate Impact on Educational Opportunity Is Measured in
Days of Lost Instruction Due to Out-of-School Suspensions
Students in U.S. public schools lost over 11 million days of instruction due to out-of-school
suspensions in 2015–16. This report breaks that total down at the state and local levels, enabling
policymakers to understand the impact of suspensions on every racial group and on students with
disabilities. This report is the first to capture the full impact on instructional time from differences
in use of out-of-school suspensions at the state and district levels. These rates are calculated by
dividing the actual reported total days lost due to out-of-school suspensions from every school and
district in the nation by each school’s reported enrollment data.
Across all grades, for every 100 students enrolled, there were 23 days of instruction lost due to
out-of-school suspensions. However, this holistic view of all students in all grades obscures the
reality that in secondary schools, the rate of lost instruction is more than five times higher than the
elementary rates: 37 days lost per 100 middle and high school students compared to just 7 days per
100 elementary school students.
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Rates of lost instruction for each racial group reveal far larger differences in the opportunity to
learn than more traditional rates might sugest:
At the secondary level, the disparities are the most pronounced:
• Black students lost 103 days per 100 students enrolled, which is 82 more days than the
21 days their White peers lost due to out-of-school suspensions.
• Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students had the second highest rate, at 63 days lost per
100 students enrolled.
• Native American students lost 54 days per 100 students enrolled.
• Students with disabilities at the secondary level lost 68 days per 100 students enrolled,
which was about twice as much as secondary students without disabilities.
Even more alarming disparities are observed when we look at race with gender:
• Black boys lost 132 days per 100 students enrolled.
• Black girls had the second highest rate, at 77 days per 100 students enrolled, which was
seven times the rate of lost instruction experienced by White girls at the secondary level.
These differences sugest that we cannot expect to close the racial achievement gap if we do not
close the discipline gap. These overarching concerns rise to an acute level in some locations when
we examine the disparate impact on instructional time for every state and district in the nation.
Some of the states at the secondary level with the largest racial gaps compared to White students
include the following:
• Missouri: Black students lost 162 more days than White students.
• New Hampshire: Latinx students lost 75 more days than White students.
• North Carolina: Native American students lost 102 more days than White students.
Secondary students with disabilities in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Delaware, and
Missouri lost between 119 and 137 days per 100 students enrolled. In every state, students with
disabilities lost more instruction than their nondisabled peers.
The state-level data reveal only a small part of the problem. Secondary students in many districts
lost instruction at rates that shock the conscience. Each of the following large districts had rates of
well more than a year’s worth of school, over 182 days per 100 students. Specifically, in each of the
following districts, students lost:
• 416 days per 100 students in Grand Rapids, MI;
• 352 days per 100 students in Richmond City, VA;
• 320 days per 100 students in Buffalo City, NY;
• 276 days per 100 students in Youngstown, OH;
• 250 days per 100 students in Lile Rock, AR; and
• 230 days per 100 students in Danville, IL.
In these districts, the rates of lost instruction for Black students and students with disabilities were
even higher.
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This report also reveals that the impact of suspensions on lost instruction varies dramatically
from one district to the next. Although we did not report on any individual schools, we did find
some of the most disturbing rates and disparities when we looked at alternative schools across
the nation: Specifically (aer excluding schools that are part of the juvenile justice system) at the
secondary level, the following race and gender breakdown describes the rates of lost instruction
due to out-of-school suspensions, expressed as days lost per 100 students enrolled in our
nation’s alternative schools:
• Black boys lost 235 days per 100 students.
• Black girls lost 156 days per 100 students.
• Boys with disabilities lost 170 days per 100 students.
• Girls with disabilities lost 94 days per 100 students.
• White boys lost 109 days per 100 students.
• White girls lost 48 days per 100 students.
Research indicates that observed differences in the frequency of suspensions oen reflect
differences in leadership, policies, and practices. Oen overlooked is the degree to which school
districts use alternative disciplinary schools. This report reveals that alternative schools, in the
agregate, have the highest rates of lost instruction and the largest racial disparities. One concern
is that school districts that do not replace harsh policies may give the appearance that they are
reducing their use of suspensions, but rather than making improvements, they are instead relying
on disciplinary removal to alternative schools or finding other ways to remove students, such as
referring them to law enforcement while not issuing a suspension.
A review of the most recent data provides a useful snapshot, but a review of the trends in rates over
time provides a clearer picture, one that can help educators and policymakers begin to distinguish
effective reforms from those that are not well implemented. To report on these trends, this report,
in Part II, uses the “risk” for suspension, which we report for nearly every district in the nation.
The “risk” for suspension is a conservative measure because it does not reflect the frequency or
duration of suspensions. Despite these limits, we use it because 2015–16 was the first year the Civil
Rights Data Collection (CRDC) required the collection and reporting of days of lost instruction data,
making the risk for suspension the only viable measure available for tracking trends in the use
of suspension.
Part II: High Rates and Large Disparities and Trends Over Time
Elementary rates have not declined. Since 2009–10, at the elementary school level, the risk for
suspension increased by less than one half of 1 percentage point, nationally. This was true for Black,
White, and Latinx students.
Secondary rates have declined, and the racial gap has narrowed slightly, since 2009–10. During
this same time period, the Black secondary student risk for suspension has declined 6 percentage
points. That is slightly more than it has declined for Latinx students (-5.4) and over twice the
decline for White secondary students (-2.5).
Further, the declines were not offset by increases in the use of in-school suspensions.
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We also looked at how racial disparities among students with disabilities had changed since
2011–12 and found that despite their relatively higher rates, all groups showed a decline, and both
Black and Latinx students with disabilities had narrowed the racial gap with their White peers.
Despite the downward trends in secondary schools nationally, some districts had very
large increases in the risk for suspension. Secondary students in the following large districts
experienced the greatest overall increase in their risk for out-of-school suspension:
• Richmond City, GA: 17 percentage points
• Trenton, NJ: 15 percentage points
• Ferguson-Florissant, MO: 15 percentage points
• South Bend, IN: 14 percentage points
• Reynoldsburg City, OH: 14 percentage points
In Part II, we highlight those districts where Latinx and Native American students also
experienced unusually high suspension rates. Our key findings include:
• The 20 highest-suspending districts for Latinx students came from just 11 states.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey each had three of the highest-suspending districts, and
California and Colorado each had two.
• The 20 highest-suspending districts for Native American students were located in just six
states. Eight were located in Arizona, four in Montana, and three in Minnesota.
Part III: School Policing, Lost Instruction, Referrals to Law Enforcement,
and School-Related Arrests
Given that there have been recent changes to federal education policy, including funding and recent
encouragement to add school police in the wake of school shootings, this report looks at what we
know from the required reporting of school-related arrests and referrals to law enforcement. This
report documents a major policy and oversight failure with regard to this critical information.
Although these data have been required since 2009–10, many of the nation’s largest districts,
including Los Angeles, New York City, and Boston, reported no school-related arrests. Given
that referrals to law enforcement must, by definition, include all calls to police about student
misconduct as well as all school-related arrests, the widespread failure to report the data on arrests
means that the referral to law enforcement and school-related arrest data are likely inaccurate and
underreported. In Part III, we provide details on which districts are missing data and analyze only
those districts that reported some referrals or arrests.
Equally important, in Part III, this report documents widespread noncompliance with federal
requirements that every district report its data on referrals to law enforcement and school-related
arrests as part of its annual school district report card. In 2015, when Congress passed ESSA, it
intended the public to see the data on school policing, as it required that these data be added to
every state’s and district’s annual public report card. These are the same data that must be reported
to federal civil rights enforcement agencies as part of the CRDC. Therefore, the widespread failure
to report the data on school policing is especially disconcerting in the wake of the resurgence of
concerns about how racism affects policing.
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Recommendations
Eliminate unnecessary removals
Generally, policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels should eliminate the use of out-
of-school suspensions and expulsions for lower-level offenses and should reduce the length
of suspensions for other moderate and serious offenses, when practicable. In some cases, like
suspensions for truancy, eliminating grounds for suspension requires no replacement.
Switch to more eective policies and practices that serve an educational purpose
In many other cases, policymakers should replace punitive discipline with supportive and inclusive
responses that research indicates will likely serve a clear educational purpose. Toward this end,
educators should pursue nonpunitive strategies—alternatives that teach responsibility, enhance
social and emotional learning, and help students improve their conduct. Policymakers should
consider supporting a range of alternatives, including trauma-informed, restorative, and culturally
responsive practices that emphasize remedying root causes. A focus on the educational purpose
should also encourage those using suspensions to reduce their duration. The success of alternative
approaches frequently entails training to help teachers to improve classroom management skills in
ways that are aligned with these responses. Administrators must also be provided with the training
and support they need to implement discipline reforms with integrity and to improve equity in
resources and outcomes.
Review and respond to discipline disparities to promote more equitable outcomes
Equitable approaches should include efforts to diminish the influence of racism and improve the
multicultural responsiveness of all adult members of the school community, including regular
reflection on the disparities in exclusionary discipline and its impact on the opportunity to learn.
Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of the impact of disciplinary exclusion disparities along
the lines of race, gender, English learner, and disability status ultimately entails evaluating the
disparities in days of lost instruction due to disciplinary removal. The point of such reflection is not
only to discourage the use of suspensions, but also to reduce their length when they are used which
will help diminish their disparate impact as much as possible.
Policymakers should also consider supporting teacher training designed to improve teacher–
student engagement. These and other approaches that improve the quality of relationships
between teachers and students have also shown promise for reducing suspensions and their
racially disparate impact on educational opportunity. More efforts are needed to understand and
eliminate the impact of racial discrimination on disciplinary decisions, including the invocation of
law enforcement.
Some of the recommendations above and some that follow may be beyond the scope of the
particular descriptive research presented in this report, but all are based on our prior studies,
including research featured in our book, Closing the School Discipline Gap: Equitable Remedies
for Excessive Exclusion; broader knowledge of the research literature; and experience providing
assistance to states and districts. Based on our broader understandings, we also encourage
Congress to consider the recommendations specified by the Leadership Conference on Civil and
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Human Rights’ leer to Congress, titled “Civil Rights Principles for Safe, Healthy, and Inclusive
School Climates,” which was joined by 295 signatories on June 19, 2020, including the Civil Rights
Project at UCLA.
In addition, at all levels, policy changes are needed to ensure that when efforts to address excessive
and disparate discipline are undertaken, progress is evaluated using the following two principles:
1. Reduce the harm experienced by those groups that are most oen suspended by reducing
both the use and the duration of suspensions.
2. Prioritize efforts that help prevent misconduct.
Federal law and policy recommendations: More efforts are needed to eliminate the impact of
racial discrimination on disciplinary responses. The following recommendations apply to the
federal government, including the presidential administration, and reflect areas of concern raised
in the current report.
• The administration should reinstate the U.S. Department of Education (DoED) and U.S.
Department of Justice’s 2016 guidance on school discipline to inform state and local efforts
to eliminate the discriminatory use of exclusionary discipline policies.
• Once the guidance is reinstated, these two enforcement agencies should review the data for
districts with large disparities in rates of lost instruction, as well as high and disparate rates
of referrals to law enforcement, and intervene as appropriate.
• Congress should increase funding to federal civil rights enforcement agencies to increase
their capacity to conduct the sugested reviews and interventions.
• DoED should offer technical assistance, alongside increased oversight and accountability,
to ensure that states and districts accurately report their discipline data, including
required but oen underreported data on referrals to law enforcement and school-
related arrests.
• Congress should add a private right of action to ensure that, when necessary, individuals
can take recourse in a court of law when asserting systemic forms of discrimination,
including policies and practices that may fall afoul of the disparate impact regulations
pertaining to race, national origin, gender, and disability discrimination.
• DoED needs to continue to collect and report discipline data, including days of lost
instruction due to out-of-school suspensions, and referrals to law enforcement and school-
related arrests, but do so annually.
• OCR needs to add to the current CRDC a collection of data on the total number of
suspensions. For each suspension, the primary reason for the suspension should also be
collected, and these data should be publicly reported on OCR’s website.
• Congress should provide federal funding to states and districts to encourage training of
teachers and administrators to implement more effective alternatives to punitive and
exclusionary forms of school discipline, and to ensure that there are sufficient support
personnel to address the needs of students with disabilities as well as students with mental
health needs, including youth who have experienced trauma.
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• DoED should support additional state- and district-level research regarding more effective
policies and practices to use instead of disciplinary removals.
• DoED should also provide additional accountability measures to discourage blatant
noncompliance with data collection and reporting.
• DoED should also provide technical support to states and districts to ensure that the
public at the state and local levels receives accurate and timely data on school climate,
disagregated across more than one protected category (e.g., race with disability as
currently required by the CRDC).
• Members of Congress should request that the U.S. Government Accountability Office
conduct a review of the extent of noncompliance with ESSA’s state and district report card
data requirements pertaining to referrals to law enforcement and school-related arrests.
State law and policy recommendations: State policymakers should improve the collection
and public reporting of discipline data and create incentives for districts to reduce the use
of suspensions, especially for minor offenses. State policymakers should also consider the
following actions:
• State boards of education should review and revise the statewide accountability plan
and make school discipline one of the additional nonacademic indicators for district
accountability. In California, for example, any district that suspends over 6% of the
enrolled student body is flaged as needing improvement, and the state then offers
technical assistance.
• State departments of education should identify districts in the state that have problematic
racial and disability disparities in discipline and, when applicable, provide support
to identified districts to conduct root-cause analyses and effective redirection of
Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds toward coordinated early
intervention services.
• State aorneys general should incorporate the federal school discipline guidance and
increase enforcement of antidiscrimination laws in our public schools, especially with
regard to unjust disciplinary removals. Several aorneys general have issued such
statements. In Washington state, a combination of legislation, regulation, and state
guidance is being implemented to target high and disparate exclusionary discipline,
including transfers to alternative schools.
• Both the state departments of education and aorneys general should ensure the collection
and public reporting of accurate discipline data in annual state and district report cards,
including days of lost instruction due to out-of-school suspensions, referrals to law
enforcement, and school-related arrests.
• State aorneys general should review the state’s implementation of IDEA requirements
to identify racial disproportionality in discipline among students with disabilities
to ensure that state departments of education are appropriately implementing the
federal regulations.
• State legislators should limit the use of suspensions to ensure that minor misconduct is not
met with disciplinary exclusion from school. California, Texas, Ohio, and Connecticut all
have passed legislation limiting the use of suspension for minor misconduct.
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• State policymakers should eliminate the use of federal, state, and local funds for school
police and/or security staff and encourage the elimination of police involvement in
addressing routine school discipline. When practicable, funds delineated for police
and security should be redirected toward direct supports for students, teachers,
and administrators.
Recommendations for local policymakers: Even in the absence of federal or state policy changes,
there is a great deal that individual school districts can do, including the following:
• Track the frequency and rates of lost instruction from out-of-school suspensions and use
the data to inform local discipline policy.
• Have school boards conduct a public review and discussion of discipline disparities at
least twice each year at school board meetings, including the amount of lost instruction
due to discipline and the resulting disparities. For districts in which suspensions are
frequent and disparities are wide, they should develop an action plan with specific goals for
implementation informed by input from the community members most affected.
• Continue to use the DoED’s and U.S. Department of Justice’s 2016 guidance on school
discipline to evaluate and guide how and when to make changes to the code of conduct.
• Require that all suspensions over a certain length be subject to review and approval by
the district’s central office to ensure that disparate paerns are noticed and that lengthier
suspensions are justified in light of the educational purpose.
• Demand that local and state educational agencies report annually disagregated data on
referrals to law enforcement and school-related arrests.
• Audit public school funding and seek the elimination or reduction of funding for school
police and security guards. Compare allocations for police and other security with funding
for student support personnel. Use the best available research on the impact of school
police on school climate to inform decisions regarding security personnel.
• Decriminalize disorderly conduct and other nonviolent and non–drug-related behavior so
that school behavior incurs school-based responses.
• Set aside the resources needed for leadership and staff training and for intervention
programs that will address the unjustified loss of instruction due to disciplinary removal.
• Use school climate surveys, behavior incident reports, and other monitoring to ensure that
school reforms are improving the conditions of learning.
• Seek partnerships with other organizations and dedicate resources to evaluating reform
efforts to distinguish the effective remedies from ineffective discipline reform efforts.
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About the Authors
Daniel J. Losen, J.D., M.Ed., is Director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, an initiative of the
UCLA Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. He has worked at the Civil Rights Project since
1999, when it was affiliated with Harvard Law School, where he was a lecturer on law. Losen’s work
concerns the impact of law and policy on children of color, including the reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, with a focus on promoting diversity, access to effective
teachers, and improving graduation rate accountability; the Individuals With Disabilities Education
Act and racial inequity in special education; school discipline and revealing and redressing the
“school-to-prison pipeline”; and protecting English learners’ right to equal educational opportunity.
On these and related topics, Losen conducts law and policy research; has published books, reports,
and articles; and works closely with federal and state legislators to inform legislative initiatives.
Both for the Civil Rights Project and independently, he provides guidance to policymakers,
educators, and advocates at the state and district levels. Before becoming a lawyer, Losen taught in
public schools for 10 years and was a founder of an alternative public school.
Paul Martinez is a Research Associate at the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the UCLA Civil Rights
Project. Martinez’s role focuses on understanding and providing solutions to disparities in school
discipline, achievement, and graduation rates at the district, state, and national levels. He collaborates
enthusiastically with educators, advocates, and policymakers across the nation and assists with strategy
development for policy change. Martinez was previously a Research Associate for the Higher Education
Research Institute and the Los Angeles Education Research Institute at UCLA. A doctoral candidate
in Sociology at UCLA, his dissertation research uses both quantitative and social network analysis
methods to examine race/ethnicity, gender, and class inequities in k–12 and higher education seings.
He holds a B.A. in Sociology from Sonoma State University and an M.A. in Sociology from UCLA.
About the UCLA Civil Rights Project’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies
The UCLA Civil Rights Project’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies (CCRR) is dedicated to improving
educational opportunities and outcomes for children who have been discriminated against
historically due to their race or ethnicity and who are frequently subjected to exclusionary
practices, such as disciplinary removal, overrepresentation in special education, and reduced
access to a college-prep curriculum. CCRR has issued numerous reports about the use of
disciplinary exclusion, including the 2015 report Are We Closing the School Discipline Gap?,
which was recognized as the best policy report of the year by the American Educators Research
Association. Recent reports include Disabling Punishment: The Need for Remedies to the Disparate
Loss of Instruction Experienced by Black Students With Disabilities (2018) and Is California Doing
Enough to Close the Discipline Gap? (2020). CCRR also provides technical assistance directly to
states, school districts, and civil rights enforcement agencies.
CCRR is an initiative of the UCLA Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP), which is
co-directed by Gary Orfield andPatricia Gándara, research professors at UCLA. Founded at Harvard
in 1996, CRP’s mission is to create a new generation of research in social science and law on critical
issues of civil rights and equal opportunity for racial and ethnic groups in the United States. CRP
has monitored the success of U.S. schools in equalizing opportunity and has been the authoritative
source of segregation statistics. CRP has commissioned more than500 studies, published more
than20 books,and issued numerous reports from authors at universities and research centers
across the country.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank our Learning Policy Institute (LPI) colleagues Jessica Cardichon, Caitlin Sco,
and Patrick Shields for extensive helpful feedback and support on several versions of the report. We
are also grateful to Bianca Marconcini for her volunteer efforts reviewing state noncompliance with
reporting of policing data. We also thank Dody Rigs for her excellent editing assistance. A warm
thank-you to Laurie Russman, the administrative point person at the Civil Rights Project, for the
numerous ways her work supported these efforts. Our acknowledgments would not be complete
without a deep thank-you to the Directors of the Civil Rights Project, Gary Orfield and Patricia
Gándara, whose particular feedback inspired several improvements and whose enduring support
and wisdom is a constant source of inspiration for the work of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies.
In addition, we thank Erin Chase and Aaron Reeves for their editing and design contributions to
this project and the entire LPI communications team for its invaluable support in developing and
disseminating this report. Without their generosity of time and spirit, this work would not have
been possible.
This research was supported by the California Endowment and the Learning Policy Institute. Core
operating support for the Learning Policy Institute is provided by the Heising-Simons Foundation,
Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, and William and Flora Hewle Foundation. We are
grateful to them for their generous support. The ideas voiced here are those of the authors and not
those of our funders.
External Reviewers
This report benefited from the insights and expertise of two external reviewers: Rebecca Fitch,
Former Project Manager for the Civil Rights Data Collection at the U.S. Department of Education;
and Ajmel Quereshi, Senior Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. We
thank them for the care and aention they gave the report.
The appropriate citation for this report is: Losen, D. J., & Martinez, P. (2020). Lost opportunities:
How disparate school discipline continues to drive differences in the opportunity to learn. Palo Alto,
CA/Los Angeles, CA: Learning Policy Institute; Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights
Project, UCLA.
The Center for Civil Rights Remedies
at The Civil Rights Project
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Aribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this
license, visit hp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Document last revised February 17, 2021
