Weighing the Cost of School Suspensions in Massachusetts

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The New England Center for Investigative Reporting recently reported findings detailing disciplinary trends within the public education system of Massachusetts. According to the analysis, almost 200,000 school days were lost to out-of-school and in-school suspensions and expulsions during the 2009-2010 school year. The organization said that days lost to suspension or expulsions during the timeframe were equal to about 10 percent of the 172 million school days accumulated by the state’s nearly 1 million public school students. The analysis reports that while the Boston school system is more likely to expel students permanently, the Worchester school system ultimately totaled up more lost school days due to disciplinary actions, with approximately 5,000 lost school days compared to the capital city’s estimated 2,765. The analysis also found that more than 2,000 students, some as young as age 4, were suspended from the state’s early elementary programs, which entails pre-kindergarten to third grade classes.

JJIE Joins Investigative News Network

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The JJIE.org is the newest member of the Investigative News Network, a consortium of more than 60 non-profit newsrooms in North America. “We are excited about having JJIE and Kennesaw State University as part of the network,” Kevin Davis the CEO and Executive Director of the INN said in a press release. “Juvenile justice issues are chronically underreported by the mainstream media and we are delighted to help bring high quality and persistent coverage of this important area.”

The INN counts among its members the Washington, D.C.- based Center for Public Integrity, National Public Radio, OpenScerets.org and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, New York-based ProPublica, the Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Investigative Reporting and Minneapolis-based MinnPost.com to name a few. The stated mission of the Los Angeles-based INN is to help member "non-profit news organizations produce and distribute stories with the highest impact possible, and to become sustainable nonprofit organizations." “Joining the INN collaboration is a logical step in the JJIE.org’s movement into a national news organization covering youth justice issues,” said JJIE.org Executive Director Leonard Witt, who calls juvenile justice the civil rights issue of our time.