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.

MathBOOST began last fall with six trained tutors — all of them parents or caregivers — working across four of the district’s 50 elementary campuses. It will expand to more than 20 tutors assisting children in 11 schools next year, said Oakland REACH’s CEO, Lakisha Young.

The tutors, or as Oakland REACH calls them, work inside the classroom alongside teachers and also pull children out for small group instruction, said Alicia Arenas, the district’s director of elementary instruction. 

“We really want our kids to be algebra-ready by the time that they enter middle school and high school,” she said, adding that at least one principal reported that participating children truly enjoy the program. “And the teachers bring up the great math progress they’re seeing from students who work with the math tutors.”

She added that students who are not involved in the program regularly ask if they could join. 

Tutors are paid an hourly rate and qualify for full benefits. Most assist third- through fifth-grade students and two of the six work with younger children. All have strong ties to the district and were carefully chosen, Arenas said. 

“We were looking for that connection and that investment in Oakland and OUSD,” she said. “We also wanted our tutors to represent the community that they serve.”

Some are graduates while others have children in the district. Math tutor Janine Godfrey, 55, works primarily at Garfield Elementary School. She said she helps children better understand their lessons and maintain their focus on the subject during class. 

“I chose this work because I have spent the last three years working through the middle school math curriculum with my son and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed math and teaching,” said Godfrey, who has run her own catering business for 25 years. “It felt like it was time to give back to the community and this felt like a perfect fit for me.”

Godfrey said she’s been moved by the students’ openness and by their ability to forge a solid bond with her.

“I truly hope that the work we have done together will somehow inspire them to work hard in math — and perhaps even enjoy it once in a while,” she said. 

As part of the new tutoring effort, Oakland REACH launched a series of outreach-focused “Math Mindset” meetings at the Think College Now Elementary School campus. 

The organization uses the time to help parents confront their own insecurities around the subject — they remind participants of the groundbreaking strides and cultures made in the topic — as a means to improve their own students’ success. 

REACH secured several respected math educators of color to inspire families, Young said, adding that she hopes the gatherings will also serve to identify possible math tutors. 

Recruitment has been a challenge as many people in the Oakland school community identify themselves as “bad at math,”  an idea that leaves parents thinking they can’t help their children progress in the subject, Young said.  

“We have to employ a different strategy when it comes to bringing our communities along in math,” she said. “We need to do the work of building the confidence and awareness they need to feel like math is something in my ancestry.”

Young said REACH’s math-related efforts will extend beyond the school year as the organization recently secured a summertime partnership with the district. SummerBOOST will allow math tutoring at two pilot sites serving some 350 children in kindergarten through fourth grade. 

Children all over the country have long struggled with math. Systemic inequity has caused Black, Hispanic and poor children to fall behind even further than their peers nationwide, a gap that grew worse because of the pandemic. Fourth-grade NAEP scores fell a stunning five points in 2022 from 2019. Eighth graders suffered an eight-point drop in that same time period, erasing decades of growth.

Results are equally troubling in the Oakland district: scored proficient on the 2022-23 state math assessments. High school students fared even worse, with just 14.11% of 11th graders reaching that same benchmark.  

“The mindset shift is key,” Young said. 

Young started REACH eight years ago with the goal of empowering Black and brown families to advocate for a high-quality education for their children. During the pandemic, REACH launched the Virtual Family Hub, providing online learning opportunities to families that resulted in significant literacy gains for students. 

In its December 2021 Hub parent satisfaction survey, 88% of families wanted more math intervention support for their children. So, after crafting an effective literacy model, the group turned its attention to math. 

“Let’s go back to K-2 when they are most flexible around deficits and excited about learning,” Young said. “This is a full frontal attack.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies provide financial support to The Oakland REACH and The 74.