GAO also reports unfair treatment of black students

WASHINGTON — Black students continue to be disciplined at school more often and more harshly than their white peers, often for similar infractions, according to a new report by Congress’s nonpartisan watchdog agency, which counters claims fueling the Trump administration’s efforts to re-examine discipline policies of the Obama administration.

The report, issued by the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday, is the first national governmental analysis of disciplinary policies since the Obama administration issued guidance in 2014 that urged schools to examine the disproportionate rates at which black students were being punished.

Critics of the Obamaera guidance have questioned whether students of color suffer from unfair treatment under school disciplinary policies. The GAO found that not only have black students across the nation continued to bear the brunt of such policies, but the effects were felt more widely than previously reported — including by black students in affluent schools.

Additionally, the agency found that school suspensions began to fall the year before the Obama administration urged schools to move away from the overuse of such measures, undermining claims that the guidance forced schools to cut suspensions. While the Obama administration’s investigations did reveal that black students were subjected to harsher treatment than their white peers for similar infractions, the GAO found it did not impose any new mandates on districts to reduce their suspension rates.

The findings are likely to undercut conservative claims that the guidance has resulted in federal overreach and a decline in school safety.

On Wednesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos hosted groups of educators and advocates for and against the disciplinary guidance, the 12th set of roundtables the department has held in the past year — and the first DeVos attended in person.

Nina Leuzzi, a prekindergarten teacher at a Boston charter school, said she kept DeVos her word to her class of 20 — predominantly minority 4-yearolds — by making her case to the secretary for why the guidance should stay. When the children asked her why she was traveling to Washington, she told them it was to keep them safe.

“Rescinding this would send the message that there is no longer a concern about discrimination in our schools,” Leuzzi said.

But Nicole Stewart, a former vice principal in San Diego, told DeVos that pressure to reduce suspensions had made schools dangerous. She said administrators did not expel a student with a knife at her school because he had a disability. Weeks later, he slit a student’s throat, she said.

“It is no wonder that our kids don’t think that rules and consequences apply to them,” Stewart said.

DeVos is facing new pressure after Republicans linked the guidance to the February mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and President Donald Trump assigned her to lead a school safety commission that will consider whether to repeal the guidance.