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Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice
How the historic resistance to racial desegregation in schools led to the over-punishment of Black and brown students today
Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve their behavior. Instead, suspension disrupts their education, harming the students, their families, and their schools. Black students suffer most within this broken system, experiencing a far greater risk of school punishment and the significant harms that accompany it. Many activists and scholars have considered how school punishment increases racial inequity, but few have thought to ask why. Why do we punish students the way we do, and why have we allowed this harmful practice to impact the lives of our nation’s children?
In Suspended Education, Aaron Kupchik takes readers to the root of the issue. Suspensions were not intended as a behavior management tool. Instead, they were designed to remove unwanted students from the classroom. Through statistical analysis and in-depth case studies of schools in Massachusetts and Delaware, Kupchik reveals how suspension rates skyrocketed after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, serving as an unofficial means of removing Black children from newly desegregated schools. His groundbreaking research traces the legacy of these segregationist movements, demonstrating that school districts with more desegregation-related legal battles from the 1950s onward suspend more Black students today. Combining expert analysis with compelling, accessible prose, Kupchik makes a powerful case for the end of suspension and other exclusionary punishments. The result is a revelatory explanation of a pressing problem facing all children, parents, and educators today.
Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve their behavior. Instead, suspension disrupts their education, harming the students, their families, and their schools. Black students suffer most within this broken system, experiencing a far greater risk of school punishment and the significant harms that accompany it. Many activists and scholars have considered how school punishment increases racial inequity, but few have thought to ask why. Why do we punish students the way we do, and why have we allowed this harmful practice to impact the lives of our nation’s children?
In Suspended Education, Aaron Kupchik takes readers to the root of the issue. Suspensions were not intended as a behavior management tool. Instead, they were designed to remove unwanted students from the classroom. Through statistical analysis and in-depth case studies of schools in Massachusetts and Delaware, Kupchik reveals how suspension rates skyrocketed after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, serving as an unofficial means of removing Black children from newly desegregated schools. His groundbreaking research traces the legacy of these segregationist movements, demonstrating that school districts with more desegregation-related legal battles from the 1950s onward suspend more Black students today. Combining expert analysis with compelling, accessible prose, Kupchik makes a powerful case for the end of suspension and other exclusionary punishments. The result is a revelatory explanation of a pressing problem facing all children, parents, and educators today.
296 pages, Hardcover
Published March 18, 2025
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22 people want to read
About the author
Aaron Kupchik
8 books7 followersAaron Kupchik is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. His book, Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile Courts, won the 2007 Michael J. Hindelang Book Award from the American Society of Criminology. He is also the recipient of a number of other awards for his scholarship.
His recent book, Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear, is intended for a broad audience. It uses empirical research to discuss ways that school security and discipline cause more problems than they solve.
His recent book, Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear, is intended for a broad audience. It uses empirical research to discuss ways that school security and discipline cause more problems than they solve.
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August 24, 2025
Big thanks to New York University Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Aaron Kupchik’s excellent new book Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice. Kupchik, a professor of Sociology at the University of Delaware, focuses his research interests on juvenile justice and how youths in schools are punished and policed. I was interested in reading this book because as a teacher, I am also curious to see how instances of racial injustice in society are often implemented or reproduced in other social systems like schools. Furthermore, I’ve read some other books that have addressed similar issues about school punishment of minorities, especially Black students. A few years ago, as part of a book group at work, we read Monique Morris’s Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, which details how teachers, administrators and the school system frequently punishes rather than supports young Black girls. Bettina Love’s Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal focuses more on reforms intended to improve schools, but ultimately end up harming children, especially children of color. Dr. Love examines the ways that programs and approaches to discipline ultimately leave children of color with fewer options and do not offer second chances after mistakes. I also recently read Eve Ewing’s excellent Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, in which she examines the history of exclusion and the kind of unequal opportunities that Black and Indigenous children had, and how these limited opportunities have furthered inequalities today. Ewing’s book also looks at disparities in punishment in schools, and the kind of impact they have. Needless to say, Kupchik’s focus on school punishment of Black students, especially the use of suspensions, is an important topic that has only been more recently examined. As Kupchik details, the use of suspensions was pervasive, if not widely reported, in many schools in the US, especially after school integration. I found this to be one of the more interesting elements of Dr. Kupchik’s argument—that after integration (or after the end of segregation), there was an increase in the use of suspension with disparate instances of Black students suspended from schools. We know from research and reports from the Obama administration’s Department of Education that Black students, especially Black male students, were more likely to be suspended for longer periods of time than other groups. Similarly, as Morris details in her book, Black girls are also more likely to be suspended and expelled than their white peers. However, Kupchik’s research and analysis explores the historical origins of the use of suspension and a disciplinary tool by examining two areas and districts as case studies.
In addition to being interesting in the topic of school punishment, I also grew more interested in Kupchik’s book because I worked in one of the school districts that he analyzed for his research. Early in my teaching career, I worked in the Colonial School District in New Castle, Delaware (My first day in the school was September 11, 2001). I had little experience teaching, and virtually no experience or training in working with students who were from different backgrounds, culturally, socially, economically. I attended Catholic school my entire K-12 education, and I probably suffered from the apprenticeship of observation, where teachers tended to teach the way they were taught. My experience teaching in Delaware definitely jolted me out of that misguided way of teaching. Not only because there was a diverse student body who let teachers know when teaching methods weren’t working, but there was also a great amount of professional development and support. I also participated in a professional development after school program that was grant funded, where we participated in a book club that furthered our understanding of how to create more engaging literacy activities for students. I know for a fact that this program, collaboration with colleagues, and the various PD opportunities throughout the school year really helped me grow as a teacher, but also helped me develop more engaging and responsive teaching methods that leveraged student experiences and prior knowledge to engage them. This approach also helped with discipline, where I didn’t have to rely on sending students out of the classroom or writing them up. I don’t remember many student suspensions. I do remember that truancy was a problem for some students, but the school operated an In School Suspension room (ISS), which I don’t think was much better than Out-Of-School Suspension. The ISS room had no windows, and teachers had to send packets of work to keep students busy. Although there were other students in the room, there was no noise allowed. I hated that learning was reduced to worksheets, but this was the approach to keep students in school. Reading Kupchik’s analysis and critique of discipline in Delaware’s schools after desegregation made me think of the ISS room as a possible response to the criticisms from the 1980s of this unequal measure of discipline that Black students endured. Additionally, I also thought about my lack of awareness about desegregation in Delaware. As Dr. Kupchik notes in the background and history of desegregation, not all states willingly desegregated. Although the Supreme Court declared the policy of separate but equal unconstitutional, it would be another 24 years or so before Delaware officially desegregated, becoming one of the last to do so. Prior to the official desegregation, segregation academies, schools set up with exclusionary policies in desegregated areas, appeared and continued the inequalities of education. Unfortunately, these schools continue to persist, and with vouchers becoming a possibility across the country, it would seem that this kind of inequality masked as parents’ choice or rights would thrive. Nevertheless, Dr. Kupchik’s description of the long, drawn-out process of desegregating Delaware schools made me think about the kind of tension I faced as a young white teacher with Black students. Working with students throughout the year, I think we gradually built a rapport, but there was definitely some tension and suspicion. My Black colleagues were incredibly helpful in discussing how to work with students and develop buy in and motivate them. However, I think that the recent history of segregation, probably only a generation removed from my students, most likely instilled some suspicion and doubt about school. I also remember talking to a colleague about beaches in Delaware as summer approached. They mentioned not really liking beaches since they had to avoid the white beaches. It was an eye opening experience for me, a young white teacher whose belief in racism and segregation was that the Brown Decision in 1954 largely ended both. I think my experience working in Delaware helped me as a teacher and it also made me realize the kinds of disparities and inequalities that still exist. After 2 years, I left to teach in Philly, where I worked in a school that largely had a zero-tolerance policy, and can recognize how damaging suspensions can be, not only for students, but also as Dr. Kupchik notes, for parents as well, who most likely have to miss work to either come to the school for a meeting or arrange care for students. We also witnessed students who willfully missed school because they just didn’t want to be there or that it wasn’t a good space for them. Dr. Kupchik’s description of this kind of punishment is accurate, and I’m really glad that this book is available for researchers and educators who can see the kinds of damage that have resulted in the use of suspensions as discipline.
What I also found interesting about this book is that Dr. Kupchik ties the use of suspensions into the desegregation movement. In his research, including interviews with community members, analysis of media coverage, and other artifacts from school board meetings, Dr. Kupchik discovered that there was little to no mention of suspensions prior to the desegregation periods in New Castle and Boston. However, after desegregation occurred, and students were bussed to new, integrated schools, the suspensions rose for both White and Black students, but with Black students suspended at a much higher rate. I also appreciated how Dr. Kupchik presents his data in charts and graphs, identifying the disparities and differences in these suspension rates. I hadn’t thought about how suspensions might have been a reaction to desegregation, but Dr. Kupchik’s thorough and detailed research and analysis presents a compelling argument. Furthermore, he makes a point that not all educators are racist, and this increase in inequitable punishment might not have been completely the result of explicit racism. As he notes, some educators still believe that suspension is a just punishment, and are not aware of their implicit biases. In his analysis, Dr. Kupchik explores the idea that one of the possible reasons for these suspensions could be that it was a systemic method of punishment; that is, as other schools struggled with the cultural, social, and pedagogical changes that resulted from desegregation, they may have seen schools using suspension as punishment, and it became an acceptable form of punishment. I appreciated this point of view, especially as Dr. Kupchik presents perspectives from educators and administrators I’ve witnessed and worked with. I think this also helps to confirm that while some of them may have been working towards good intentions, the pervasiveness of suspensions may have shifted their perspectives and understanding about its ultimate damages. Furthermore, Dr. Kupchik explains how suspensions not only damage the students’ learning but also lead to long-term generational damage to learning. I really appreciated the research and analysis of this issue, as well as examining suspensions from their earliest use, and hypothesizing that they were largely a reaction to desegregation. Dr. Kupchik shared some of the chaos that resulted from the earlier days after desegregation, and it made me wonder how much guidance and support schools and districts were given in implementing desegregation. While desegregation is important and necessary, it’s not something that could be done overnight. I know from my experience teaching how important professional development, observations, and other collaboration with colleagues were in helping me identify issues with my management and instruction, learning new strategies and methods to engage students, and also learning about my own implicit biases that may have affected discipline and instruction. I wondered how much support teachers had in understanding culturally responsive teaching or cultural incongruity in the classroom. Although there is a movement to keep students in schools more, I hope that educators read Dr. Kupchik’s book to better understand the issues related to suspensions and how they were initiated in American schools. More importantly, if educators read any part of this book, I really hope that they read the “Conclusion” chapter. Dr. Kupchik makes a great argument for the importance of studying issues using a framework that is critical of race. He identifies some of the bad faith arguments and the kinds of misconstrued “reverse racism” that is merely a means to avoid discussing important and relevant social issues. I really appreciated his defense of these theories by defending the criticisms as harmful distortions. I also find this to be true. I have never known any educator to teach students these theories, but it is such an important part of understanding our students’ differences and how to make them learn better. Furthermore, as a white teacher who worked with mostly Black students, I had a lot to learn from them, and my students’ experiences really confirmed many of these ideas about race and racism. It didn’t make me feel bad about being white. Rather, it made me want to do more to support them and help other people understand the kinds of injustices and inequalities that are existent in the world. The conclusion of this book was a powerful defense of the kind of framework that critically examines racism and injustice and sees it as embedded in many of the systems in our society. Furthermore, Dr. Kupchik presents some helpful alternatives to discipline that schools have been and should continue to employ to improve educational outcomes for all students, but especially those students who have been subjected to inequal discipline. As I was reading this book, the Department of Education basically eliminated the Office of Civil Rights, ostensibly making it more difficult to enforce fair and equitable treatment for students across America. While I have hope that schools will continue to educate students and improve on creating more fair and equitable discipline measures, I also recognize that the burden will fall on educators, administrators, and parents to monitor these practices and ensure that justice and equity are enforced. Nevertheless, these recent changes in federal departments make reading Suspended Education all the more important.
In addition to being interesting in the topic of school punishment, I also grew more interested in Kupchik’s book because I worked in one of the school districts that he analyzed for his research. Early in my teaching career, I worked in the Colonial School District in New Castle, Delaware (My first day in the school was September 11, 2001). I had little experience teaching, and virtually no experience or training in working with students who were from different backgrounds, culturally, socially, economically. I attended Catholic school my entire K-12 education, and I probably suffered from the apprenticeship of observation, where teachers tended to teach the way they were taught. My experience teaching in Delaware definitely jolted me out of that misguided way of teaching. Not only because there was a diverse student body who let teachers know when teaching methods weren’t working, but there was also a great amount of professional development and support. I also participated in a professional development after school program that was grant funded, where we participated in a book club that furthered our understanding of how to create more engaging literacy activities for students. I know for a fact that this program, collaboration with colleagues, and the various PD opportunities throughout the school year really helped me grow as a teacher, but also helped me develop more engaging and responsive teaching methods that leveraged student experiences and prior knowledge to engage them. This approach also helped with discipline, where I didn’t have to rely on sending students out of the classroom or writing them up. I don’t remember many student suspensions. I do remember that truancy was a problem for some students, but the school operated an In School Suspension room (ISS), which I don’t think was much better than Out-Of-School Suspension. The ISS room had no windows, and teachers had to send packets of work to keep students busy. Although there were other students in the room, there was no noise allowed. I hated that learning was reduced to worksheets, but this was the approach to keep students in school. Reading Kupchik’s analysis and critique of discipline in Delaware’s schools after desegregation made me think of the ISS room as a possible response to the criticisms from the 1980s of this unequal measure of discipline that Black students endured. Additionally, I also thought about my lack of awareness about desegregation in Delaware. As Dr. Kupchik notes in the background and history of desegregation, not all states willingly desegregated. Although the Supreme Court declared the policy of separate but equal unconstitutional, it would be another 24 years or so before Delaware officially desegregated, becoming one of the last to do so. Prior to the official desegregation, segregation academies, schools set up with exclusionary policies in desegregated areas, appeared and continued the inequalities of education. Unfortunately, these schools continue to persist, and with vouchers becoming a possibility across the country, it would seem that this kind of inequality masked as parents’ choice or rights would thrive. Nevertheless, Dr. Kupchik’s description of the long, drawn-out process of desegregating Delaware schools made me think about the kind of tension I faced as a young white teacher with Black students. Working with students throughout the year, I think we gradually built a rapport, but there was definitely some tension and suspicion. My Black colleagues were incredibly helpful in discussing how to work with students and develop buy in and motivate them. However, I think that the recent history of segregation, probably only a generation removed from my students, most likely instilled some suspicion and doubt about school. I also remember talking to a colleague about beaches in Delaware as summer approached. They mentioned not really liking beaches since they had to avoid the white beaches. It was an eye opening experience for me, a young white teacher whose belief in racism and segregation was that the Brown Decision in 1954 largely ended both. I think my experience working in Delaware helped me as a teacher and it also made me realize the kinds of disparities and inequalities that still exist. After 2 years, I left to teach in Philly, where I worked in a school that largely had a zero-tolerance policy, and can recognize how damaging suspensions can be, not only for students, but also as Dr. Kupchik notes, for parents as well, who most likely have to miss work to either come to the school for a meeting or arrange care for students. We also witnessed students who willfully missed school because they just didn’t want to be there or that it wasn’t a good space for them. Dr. Kupchik’s description of this kind of punishment is accurate, and I’m really glad that this book is available for researchers and educators who can see the kinds of damage that have resulted in the use of suspensions as discipline.
What I also found interesting about this book is that Dr. Kupchik ties the use of suspensions into the desegregation movement. In his research, including interviews with community members, analysis of media coverage, and other artifacts from school board meetings, Dr. Kupchik discovered that there was little to no mention of suspensions prior to the desegregation periods in New Castle and Boston. However, after desegregation occurred, and students were bussed to new, integrated schools, the suspensions rose for both White and Black students, but with Black students suspended at a much higher rate. I also appreciated how Dr. Kupchik presents his data in charts and graphs, identifying the disparities and differences in these suspension rates. I hadn’t thought about how suspensions might have been a reaction to desegregation, but Dr. Kupchik’s thorough and detailed research and analysis presents a compelling argument. Furthermore, he makes a point that not all educators are racist, and this increase in inequitable punishment might not have been completely the result of explicit racism. As he notes, some educators still believe that suspension is a just punishment, and are not aware of their implicit biases. In his analysis, Dr. Kupchik explores the idea that one of the possible reasons for these suspensions could be that it was a systemic method of punishment; that is, as other schools struggled with the cultural, social, and pedagogical changes that resulted from desegregation, they may have seen schools using suspension as punishment, and it became an acceptable form of punishment. I appreciated this point of view, especially as Dr. Kupchik presents perspectives from educators and administrators I’ve witnessed and worked with. I think this also helps to confirm that while some of them may have been working towards good intentions, the pervasiveness of suspensions may have shifted their perspectives and understanding about its ultimate damages. Furthermore, Dr. Kupchik explains how suspensions not only damage the students’ learning but also lead to long-term generational damage to learning. I really appreciated the research and analysis of this issue, as well as examining suspensions from their earliest use, and hypothesizing that they were largely a reaction to desegregation. Dr. Kupchik shared some of the chaos that resulted from the earlier days after desegregation, and it made me wonder how much guidance and support schools and districts were given in implementing desegregation. While desegregation is important and necessary, it’s not something that could be done overnight. I know from my experience teaching how important professional development, observations, and other collaboration with colleagues were in helping me identify issues with my management and instruction, learning new strategies and methods to engage students, and also learning about my own implicit biases that may have affected discipline and instruction. I wondered how much support teachers had in understanding culturally responsive teaching or cultural incongruity in the classroom. Although there is a movement to keep students in schools more, I hope that educators read Dr. Kupchik’s book to better understand the issues related to suspensions and how they were initiated in American schools. More importantly, if educators read any part of this book, I really hope that they read the “Conclusion” chapter. Dr. Kupchik makes a great argument for the importance of studying issues using a framework that is critical of race. He identifies some of the bad faith arguments and the kinds of misconstrued “reverse racism” that is merely a means to avoid discussing important and relevant social issues. I really appreciated his defense of these theories by defending the criticisms as harmful distortions. I also find this to be true. I have never known any educator to teach students these theories, but it is such an important part of understanding our students’ differences and how to make them learn better. Furthermore, as a white teacher who worked with mostly Black students, I had a lot to learn from them, and my students’ experiences really confirmed many of these ideas about race and racism. It didn’t make me feel bad about being white. Rather, it made me want to do more to support them and help other people understand the kinds of injustices and inequalities that are existent in the world. The conclusion of this book was a powerful defense of the kind of framework that critically examines racism and injustice and sees it as embedded in many of the systems in our society. Furthermore, Dr. Kupchik presents some helpful alternatives to discipline that schools have been and should continue to employ to improve educational outcomes for all students, but especially those students who have been subjected to inequal discipline. As I was reading this book, the Department of Education basically eliminated the Office of Civil Rights, ostensibly making it more difficult to enforce fair and equitable treatment for students across America. While I have hope that schools will continue to educate students and improve on creating more fair and equitable discipline measures, I also recognize that the burden will fall on educators, administrators, and parents to monitor these practices and ensure that justice and equity are enforced. Nevertheless, these recent changes in federal departments make reading Suspended Education all the more important.
April 1, 2025
In Suspended Education Aaron Kupchik dives into the history and origin of school suspensions. Kupchik argues schools suspension disproportionally affect black students , have no benefit to students, do not correct behavior and that is is used as a tool to remove unwanted students from school.
Kupchik is thorough is his analysis and delves back into history to illustrate his argument. He primarily looks at the time frame when schools began to be integrated.
I primarily read fiction. This year I am expanding my reading into non fiction. As a primarily fiction reader Suspended Education was a bit dense for me. It is very academic. It has great information though. I took my time reading it in between other books instead of reading it all at once.
I recommend this book to educators, administrators or anyone working within the school system. Parents I also recommend you read to be able to better advocate for your kids in school.
Thank you to NYU Press and Netgalley for an advanced reader's copy of Suspended Education.
Kupchik is thorough is his analysis and delves back into history to illustrate his argument. He primarily looks at the time frame when schools began to be integrated.
I primarily read fiction. This year I am expanding my reading into non fiction. As a primarily fiction reader Suspended Education was a bit dense for me. It is very academic. It has great information though. I took my time reading it in between other books instead of reading it all at once.
I recommend this book to educators, administrators or anyone working within the school system. Parents I also recommend you read to be able to better advocate for your kids in school.
Thank you to NYU Press and Netgalley for an advanced reader's copy of Suspended Education.
January 21, 2025
Definitely an important and informational book. Read on my phone so it took me ages to get through (ugh) but definitely fitting with my interest of education reform lately. Recommend if you're very interested in the topic but general readers might find it dry. It was an ok read but not one that I feel I would read again or buy for my reference.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews