The released by ImpactSTATS, Inc. and The BEE Collective used National Center for Education Statistics data to compare how often students were being excluded from school as a disciplinary measure at predominantly white versus Black Charleston schools in the 2022-23 school year.

To zero in on the treatment of young students, researchers considered only those schools that offered pre-kindergarten programs. Of the 42 schools in the study, 33 encompassed grades pre-K through 5; six went from pre-K to grade 8; two were pre-K to kindergarten and one school taught pre-K to second grade.

Of those schools, the ones with more than a 51% Black student population isolated children from learning settings for disciplinary reasons at a rate of 98.2 removals per 1,000 students, according to the report. This was seven times greater than the 14.1 removals per 1,000 students at majority white early-grade and elementary schools — and more than double the districtwide rate of 42.7 per 1,000 students.

Exclusionary discipline could include in-school or out-of-school suspensions and expulsion. When looking just at out-of-school suspensions in Charleston, the racial disparity by school population soared, according to the study released earlier this summer.

Students in majority Black schools faced out-of-school suspension rates of 78.8 per 1,000 students in the 2022-23 school year compared to 11.9 suspensions per 1,000 students for those in predominantly white schools. 

The districtwide rate was 34.8 suspensions per 1,000 students. 

“This tells us that we have a problem and it’s not children’s behavior — but adult action and adult decisions,” said lead researcher Melodie Baker. 

Charleston public schools served 50,312 students at the end of the last school year: 24,978 were white, 14,291 were Black and 7,916 were Hispanic, according to the district. 

Baker said removing a child from a classroom or isolating them from their teachers and peers robs them of an opportunity to learn self-regulation and is particularly damaging to the youngest learners.

“It makes kids feel like they don’t belong,” she said. “They feel ashamed. They feel confused. It affects their overall development.”

The practice is seen as : and are among the states that have banned or strictly limited such removals in the early grades.

Charleston County School District spokesman Andrew Pruitt last week pushed back against the study, which raises issues of racism and implicit bias, noting its data does not include the ages of the suspended students or the reasons why they were punished. 

“We take any report that raises concerns about unconscious bias negatively impacting our children seriously. However, we are incredibly concerned that a specific claim of that magnitude was made in the absence of an analysis of the appropriate and relevant data,” he said in a statement. 

The district didn’t start breaking down its disciplinary data by grade until recently, according to Pruitt. Though records were limited, he cited a total of 49 preschool suspensions in Charleston public schools in the 2022-23 school year. He did not separate that number by race.

Preschoolers across the U.S. are expelled at rates than K-12 students. South Carolina in preschool suspensions by a large margin in 2017-18 with 438 preschoolers suspended, according to the most recent available federal data. 

Those numbers have grown significantly worse in the Palmetto State and were a critical focus of . The Joint Citizens and Legislative Committee on Children showing 928 South Carolina public preschoolers received in-school and out-of-school suspensions in 2023-24; 66% of those 3- and 4-year-olds were children of color and 77% were boys.

The committee’s data for Charleston County schools, the state’s second-largest district, cites that 25 preschoolers received out-of-school suspensions in 2023-24 and fewer than five received an in-school suspension. Eighteen Black Charleston County public preschoolers received an out–of-school suspension and fewer than five white students did. Twenty-one male preschoolers received an out-of-school suspension that year and fewer than five female preschoolers did. Six preschoolers classified as special education students were among those removed from school for disciplinary reasons.

The Charleston County School District has taken steps to address systemic inequalities in discipline, Pruitt said, including professional development training for all its early education teachers that focuses on how to appropriately respond to student behavior while taking into account young learners’ social-emotional well-being. He said the district continues to work with early childhood education organizations throughout the state to adopt best practices.

The report by ImpactSTATS and The BEE Collective notes citing the role of educator bias in harsh discipline, including perceptions of Black children as being older than they are, less innocent, more aggressive and more deserving of punishment for the same behavior displayed by white students.

New York-based was founded by Baker in 2023 to bring more diversity to the research field and to provide technical support and research assistance to grass-roots groups working with underserved communities of color. 

The BEE — Beloved Early Education and Care — Collective is that partly funded the study and collaborated on the research. It seeks to improve maternal and child health in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, including in addressing racism and implicit bias in early child care. 

Black children across all grade levels and those with disabilities have long faced higher rates of exclusionary disciplines than other student groups. According to analyzing data from the 2020-21 school year, Black boys were nearly two times more likely than white boys to receive an out-of-school suspension or an expulsion.

“It’s mostly boys who are being suspended — mostly for rough-and-tumble play,” Baker said, speaking anecdotally of the Charleston suspensions after interviewing those who worked with or observed district students. “But there’s a lot of research out there that talks about the positives of rough-and-tumble play. Males tend to perceive that very differently.”

Of Charleston County schools’ 3,673 teachers in the 2021-22 school year, roughly 2,402 were white females, 556 were white males, 404 were Black females and 103 were Black males, according to .

Cara Kelly, a researcher who observed classrooms within the Charleston district for seven years, ending in 2019, recalled several instances where kindergarten children were made to sit alone and in silence for 30 minutes or more for minor infractions such as talking to other students, calling out while a teacher was speaking or standing up when they were supposed to sit for long stretches of time. 

“It’s OK to give a child five minutes to calm down — but not to be completely excluded,” she said. 

Kelly, now a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oklahoma’s Early Childhood Education Institute, told The 74 she believed the punishments were not developmentally appropriate and often targeted Black children. 

The report recommends the district recruit more male teachers in the early grades, increase pay for all early childhood educators, decrease student-to-staff ratios and raise awareness about discipline reform legislation that seeks to prohibit suspensions, expulsions and corporal punishment while promoting more effective means of managing student behavior. 

Researchers acknowledge that the report, funded partly by the American Heart Association Voices for Healthy Kids, should be interpreted cautiously because of the data’s limitations regarding race and age.

The BEE Collective has filed a public records request asking the Charleston district to release the suspension records for children 5 and under for the last five years broken down by age, race, gender and school. Noting that the response to that Freedom of Information request is due Aug. 31, Pruitt said it was “unfortunate” that the groups moved ahead with publishing the report without that information in hand. 

Tawanna R. Jennings, an infant and early childhood mental health consultant for South Carolina’s Partners for Early Attuned Relationships Network, called the study’s findings “pretty astounding,” adding she hopes the results will be shared widely and that Charleston teachers receive better training and greater support.

“There needs to be more resources so that [teachers] can understand these behaviors,” she said. “How do you teach these children and how do you be empathetic with what they may be experiencing?”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to ImpactSTATS and to The 74.

In the 2021-2022 school year, of students in Board District 2 (BD2) were chronically absent, according to the LAUSD Open Data portal. It was the highest among LAUSD’s seven local districts, higher than the 45.2% of all LA Unified students that were chronically absent that same year. 

At a press conference earlier this year, Carvalho said chronic absenteeism has decreased by this academic year. 

Schools in BD2 are located in the neighborhoods of East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, Downtown Los Angeles, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights, with a predominantly Latino population and low-income families, which community advocates say have been hit harder by the pandemic. 

The neighborhoods BD2 serves are still areas with the COVID-19 cases per 10,000 residents in Los Angeles County. 

“The data shows that district 2 is in a crisis,” said Maria Brenes, a senior advisor to InnerCity Struggle, an advocacy organization based in East Los Angeles. “I would compel the district to develop an adequate response, to call for a state of emergency.”

Brenes said the lack of affordability in L.A., income inequality, and the housing crisis are ongoing issues that impact these communities. With COVID, shutdowns resulted in the displacement of many families, and some still experience its repercussions.  

“Loss of income, loss of loved ones, distance learning, all together directly impacts attendance and engagement,” Brenes said. “Many families feel like they’re on their own, depending on what school their child attends, there’s different levels of support and relationships.”

Many district 2 schools are experiencing staffing shortages and struggling to address the needs of many families.

By comparison, 35.3% of students attending schools in Board District 3, which covers the communities of , largely Latino and white populations, were chronically absent last school year. 

“We have working class communities, we have foster youth, we have unhoused communities,” said LAUSD Board District 2 member Dr. Rocio Rivas. “The pandemic really allowed the district to really see the vulnerable areas in our communities and how that affects education.”

Rivas and community advocates said that chronic absenteeism is a repercussion of the difficult circumstances surrounding these communities, exacerbated by the pandemic.

“The district has really implemented structures and procedures and tool kits for principals,” Rivas said. “They’re really reaching out and trying to understand the resources and services that communities need.” 

Despite ongoing efforts, other factors have also prevented students from attending school. Community advocates have noticed a common pattern among families. 

“Some of the biggest challenges we’re hearing from families are around transportation,” said Icela Santiago, the Senior Director of Operations and Strategy at the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, an in-district partner with LAUSD. 

She said that in many instances, when there is just one car in a family, it’s used to go to work, leaving children without access to transportation. Santiago also said that when walking to school doesn’t feel safe, it deters students from attending classes. 

Santiago also attributed fear of COVID and general illnesses, especially among elementary students, that have made many parents more inclined to keep their children home. After recovering from an illness, families are also unsure when they should send their children back to school. 

iAttend, launched by Superintendent Carvalho in August, is a district-wide effort to address chronic absenteeism across LAUSD. Carvalho said that three iAttend events have been conducted since it began, in which over were knocked, and thousands of students were brought back to school. 

Asked the number of households visited in District 2, an LAUSD spokesperson could not provide the information.

To address the challenges of attending school, community engagement is a priority for Rivas, and organizations like InnerCity Struggle and the Partnership LA.

“Although it’s gone down… we need to re-engage them, so that these students who are engaged, don’t leave once again,” Rivas said. 

Since she joined the school board, Rivas said her staff have been researching chronic absenteeism policies and other support systems, and providing information to schools, especially to parents who are unfamiliar with district policies.  

Earlier this month, she and her staff visited schools to speak with principals and community representatives, an effort to understand the issues specific to each school 

“I’m really looking at community-based partnerships,” she said. “We have a lot of providers… that are connected to families and know more of the circumstances that a lot of the families are facing.” 

“If families are not well, then that means their city is not well,” Rivas said, “and that means we have a lot more work to do.”  

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.