Even though the overall use of out-of-school suspensions (OSS) in the US has declined overall, racial/ethnic disparities in OSS rates persists to this day. We show a snapshot of how state-level trends in OSS by race/ethnicity has changed over the last decade in this brief.

Corporal punishment—physical punishment of children for disciplinary purposes—in schools is still legal in about 70 countries, including the US (legal in 15 states as of 2020). Over the last five decades, the amount of corporal punishment (CP) declined dramatically across the country, largely driven by state-level bans in the use of CP in schools that began in the northeast in the 1970s. Yet, racial/ethnic disparities in the CP persists to this day.