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Last month, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a deeply alarming letter to public schools nationwide.
The letter, although not legally binding, warns schools against analyzing race disparities in school discipline data, claiming that doing so could risk legal liability. It states that previous federal guidance on tracking these disparities deterred school administrators from disciplining students altogether, making schools less safe.
Data proves that this is false. In Illinois, students continue to be disciplined, and students of color continue to be disproportionately impacted and pushed out of school.
The criminalization of Black and Latino students has an extensive history in Illinois schools. In the early 2000s, Illinois’s suspension rates were skyrocketing, driven by “zero tolerance” policies that disproportionately impacted students of color. A 2012 report published by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA Illinois found that Illinois had the highest suspension rates for Black students in the entire country.
Around this time, a group of Black and Latino parents formed Parents Organized to Win, Educate, and Renew — Policy Action Council Illinois or COFI POWER-PAC IL to organize for student discipline reform.
The organization strongly believes that punitive policies take away the humanity of students. If children are not allowed to express their emotions positively, they will express them negatively. Harsh punitive discipline policies dehumanize and fail to improve overall school safety.
POWER-PAC IL’s advocacy eventually led to the 2015 passage of a law that requires schools to treat suspension and expulsion as a last resort, only after less exclusionary interventions have been tried. It encouraged school districts to invest in whole-child and whole-community supports, including developing school-based Restorative Justice models.
But Illinois has failed to enforce compliance with this law and effectuate its goals. Exclusionary discipline numbers remain astonishingly high, and, according to 2024-2025 data, a student of color is on average 2.2 times more likely to be expelled or suspended by the district than white classmate. That same school year, students of color accounted for 71.8% of expulsions and suspensions, despite making up only 55.7% of the student population in Illinois.
Let’s be clear: Black and Brown children don’t engage in more disruptive and violent behavior than other students — but the data shows they are disciplined more harshly than their peers. Analyzing data on racial disparities and using it to ask why a Black third-grader is disciplined more harshly than a white classmate for the exact same behavior is not illegal. In fact, it is what Title VI of the Civil Rights Act intended to address.
Racial discrimination often hides behind facially neutral policies and often comes to light through analysis of data. Investigations into exclusionary discipline by administrators and student ticketing by school-based police officers proves this to be true across Illinois. Black students are far more likely to be ticketed by police at the direction of schools than white students for the same in-school adolescent behavior. Additionally, an analysis by The Chicago Reporter in 2015 found that Black students were about six times more likely to be suspended or expelled than White students.
The department’s letter reflects the continued effort by the current federal administration to rewrite history and deny that systemic racism continues to shape basic institutions in our society — including our schools.
The data shows exclusionary discipline persists and impacts students of color the most. Changing this requires continued enforcement of Illinois’s laws and a sustained investment in alternative positive behavioral interventions that prioritize student support and success. Far from an overcorrection, reform is still very much needed and in progress; however, these efforts are now at risk of being derailed before we see the systemic change decades of community organizing and legislative changes intended.
Illinois has not invested enough in restorative alternatives, and it has a deep impact on overall school environments.
Punitive discipline teaches students crime and punishment instead of teaching them what they need to be great citizens. Every school, every child and every family should have access to social-emotional tools, which restorative alternatives provide because without addressing the root issue, nothing will be resolved.
Those working for reform necessary to address the continuing impact of racial discrimination in school discipline should not be deterred by the federal government’s letter and must commit to continuing the necessary and urgent work of advocating for school culture and climate transformation at the local community and broader policy level.
It’s time to finish building a system that will treat all students fairly, keep all students in school, and support them in leading successful lives.
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