Exclusive: Watchdog finds Black girls face more frequent, severe discipline in school

Black girls face more discipline and more severe punishments in public schools than girls from other racial backgrounds, according to a groundbreaking new report set for release Thursday by a congressional watchdog.

The report, shared exclusively with NPR, took nearly a year-and-a-half to complete and comes after several Democratic congressional members requested the study. Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, later with support from Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, asked the Government Accountability Office in 2022 to take on the report.

The findings offer a first of its kind snapshot of the disciplinary disparities that Black girls face in public schools across the U.S. — often for similar behaviors.

Over the course of the 85-page report, the GAO says it found that in K-12 public schools, Black girls had the highest rates of so-called "exclusionary discipline," such as suspensions and expulsions. Overall, the study found that during the 2017-18 school year, Black girls received nearly half of these punishments, even as they represent only 15% of girls in public schools.

According to the report, Black girls accounted for 45% of out-of-school suspensions, 37% of in-school suspensions and 43% of expulsions for actions like "defiance, disrespect, and disruption." Nationally, Black girls received such exclusionary discipline at rates 3 to 5.2 times those of white girls. The study also found that when they had a disability, discipline rates for Black girls grew even larger.

"This new report, it's damning. It affirms what we've known all along that Black girls continue to face a crisis of criminalization in our schools," Pressley said. "And the only way we can address this crisis is through intentional, trauma-informed policy. And Congress must act."

The GAO report is the first to examine underlying infraction data among discipline disparities and identify what contributes to them, according to Pressley's office. It found that school poverty levels, the percentage of girls facing disabilities, the number of new teachers and the presence of a school resource officer were among the factors tied to increased discipline for girls.

For her part, Pressley said it's clear that racism, colorism and other biases such as adultification — or perceiving girls as older and more mature than their peers — also contribute to the harsher discipline of Black girls.

Pressley and other women members of Congress are set to present the findings on Thursday.

“I hope that, because of these important findings, schools across the country and policymakers at every level of government examine the use of exclusionary discipline policies that are disproportionately harming Black girls,” said DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

The report found that punishments grow more dramatically in cases of girls who present with additional levels of diversity, such as Black girls who are also part of the LGBTQ community. Pressley said that the biased discipline patterns are deeply harmful, contributing to low self-esteem while detracting from students' ability to learn.