Nationwide, nearly 1 in 5 students with disabilities were given out-of-school suspensions during the 2011-2012 school year. That’s a rate about twice that of their typically-developing peers, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Education.
However, a new analysis of the figures – the most recent available – finds the discipline was not handed out uniformly across the country.
High school students with disabilities in Florida were most likely to be suspended, with 37 percent of such kids given an out-of-school suspension. Florida was followed by Nevada, Delaware, South Carolina and Louisiana which also reported high use of the disciplinary measure among kids with disabilities.
By contrast, just 5 percent of high school students with disabilities in North Dakota were suspended, the fewest of any state. Other places with lower suspension rates for this population included Utah and Idaho, according to the review from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.