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.

Children of the 1980s, You are so Not Like Today’s Kids

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Last month, the National Center for Education Statistics released a new report detailing numerous changes in the demographic and behavioral patterns of America’s youth over the last 30 years. “America’s Youth: Transitions to Adulthood,” published by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, finds many differences between the youth -- described in the study as those between the ages of 14-24 -- of today, and their peers from 10, 20 and 30 years ago. The report states that while there are approximately 1 million more youth in the United States than three decades ago, the overall population percentage of the nation’s youth shrunk from 20 percent in 1980 to just 15 percent in 2010. The report,  Susan Aud, Angelina KewalRamani and Lauren Froehlich, also notes that the youth of today are more likely to be enrolled in school than the youth of 30 years ago, with 52 percent of the nation’s 20- and 21-year-olds currently enrolled in college, compared to only 31 percent in 1980. According to the report, the number of young adults whose highest education level was a high school degree dropped from 46 percent to 29 percent over the last 30 years.