The U.S. Education Department has issued formal guidance telling schools they may not alter discipline rules for the purpose of reducing racial disparities, a directive that critics say will complicate efforts to confront persistent inequities in school discipline.
In a letter from the department's office for civil rights, officials stated that a school's decision "to change its discipline policies with the purpose of avoiding or reducing racial disparities in discipline constitutes race discrimination." The guidance further instructs that students must not be treated differently because of race and that practices characterized as "racial balancing" fall under prohibited discrimination.
The guidance arrives after the Education Department last month eliminated a set of "disparate impact" regulations that, for decades, had barred policies and practices that produced discriminatory effects, even when those effects were unintended. The new instruction makes clear that altering disciplinary practices with the explicit goal of narrowing racial gaps is impermissible under the department's interpretation.
Federal civil rights data have long documented disproportionate disciplinary outcomes for Black students. A 2023 Education Department report found that Black public preschool children received out-of-school suspensions at a rate nearly twice their enrollment. The same report indicated that Black boys in K-12 public schools were nearly twice as likely as white boys to receive an out-of-school suspension or expulsion. For Black girls, the report showed they were nearly twice as likely as white girls to receive one or more in-school suspensions, one or more out-of-school suspensions, and expulsions.
Advocates for education equity and civil rights expressed concern following the guidance. Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy at the education equity advocacy group EdTrust, criticized the policy change, saying:
"You cannot address racial disparities in school discipline by telling schools to ignore race," he said. "Black students have long faced some of the harshest discipline in our nation’s schools."
The guidance also comes amid broader actions by the Trump administration targeting diversity initiatives, which the administration has characterized as discriminatory toward white people and males. Civil rights organizations have argued that such actions remove tools designed to assist marginalized groups and represent a rollback of prior practices aimed at reducing inequities.
How schools respond to the guidance and how districts reconcile compliance with federal civil rights obligations remain open questions raised by the department's new direction.