Chapter 3.4 · The crossroads · Report

School discipline and incarceration

Out-of-school suspensions in the 2020 to 2021 school year ran from 3.1 per thousand students in the least deprived tenth of school districts to 23.6 in the most deprived.

Author: Vishal Singh
Affiliation: NYU Stern
Published: 9 October 2026

Every estimate of the chapter with its interval and every figure as a table, generated from the chapter's data files. Table n of this report is figure n of the chapter. The same report as Markdown: report.md.

Identification

Title

School discipline and incarceration

Label

The crossroads

Chapter

3.4 (Part III, School; An American life)

Question

How do suspension rates rise with neighborhood deprivation, and how far apart are Black and white children raised in the same tract on later incarceration?

Dek

Out-of-school suspensions in the 2020 to 2021 school year ran from 3.1 per thousand students in the least deprived tenth of school districts to 23.6 in the most deprived.

Grain

institutions

Status

published

Published

9 October 2026

Updated

not revised

Data sources

Civil Rights Data Collection. Civil Rights Data Collection 2020-21 school year: students suspended out of school, expelled, referred to law enforcement and arrested, and enrollment, by district, with Black and white students separately; years: 2020-21 school year; weights: none (counts reported by districts); district rates weighted by enrollment
Area Deprivation Index. Neighborhood Atlas Area Deprivation Index 2023 (v4.0.1), tract national rank, averaged to districts and to 2010 tracts; years: 2023 release (version 4.0.1; built on ACS 2019-2023); weights: 2019-2023 tract population within districts; land area within 2010 tracts
American Community Survey. ACS 2019-2023 tract population, used only to weight the tracts of a district when its deprivation rank is averaged; years: 2019-2023 (5-year); weights: 2019-2023 tract population
Opportunity Atlas. Tract incarceration shares of children from low-income families, children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010, native 2010 tracts, genders pooled, by race; years: 1978-1983 birth cohorts (2018 release); weights: 2010 census tract population
USDA Food Access Research Atlas. 2010 census population of each 2010 tract, used only as the weight for Opportunity Atlas comparisons; years: 2019 release (population from the 2010 census); weights: none (census counts)

Canonical URL

https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/school-discipline-and-incarceration

Markdown

https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/school-discipline-and-incarceration/report.md

BibTeX

@misc{singh2026schooldisciplineandincarceration,
  author = {Singh, Vishal},
  title = {School discipline and incarceration},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/school-discipline-and-incarceration},
  note = {In ZIP Code Destiny. Published 9 October 2026.}
}

Principal estimates

The facts the dek and the opening prose cite, in order of appearance. Every fact is in the table of all estimates below.

Estimand	Population	Period	Value	Interval	n	Weights	Source	Fact id
enrollment-weighted mean of district rates (students suspended over students enrolled), bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count in the least deprived tenth of districts by deprivation rank	2020-21 school year	3.1	95% CI 2.4 to 4.1	1,025 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection	oss_d1
enrollment-weighted mean of district rates (students suspended over students enrolled), bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count in the most deprived tenth of districts by deprivation rank	2020-21 school year	23.6	95% CI 20.2 to 27.3	1,022 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection	oss_d10
observed Black suspensions over expected suspensions at the district's white rate, pooled, bootstrap interval over states	Black students enrolled in the 5156 districts with at least 50 Black and as many white students and a reported suspension count for each group	2020-21 school year	2.2	95% CI 2.1 to 2.4	5,156 districts	Black enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection	oss_ratio
count of districts with at least 50 Black and as many white students and a reported count for each	school districts (local education agencies) that reported to the Civil Rights Data Collection	2020-21 school year	5,156			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection	bw_n
population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties	Black children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas also estimates the other group	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	5.2%	95% CI 5.0% to 5.3%	27,795 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas	inc_black
population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties	white children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas also estimates the other group	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	1.9%	95% CI 1.8% to 2.0%	27,795 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas	inc_white

Findings

Out-of-school suspensions in the 2020 to 2021 school year were 3.1 per thousand students in the least deprived tenth of school districts and 23.6 in the most deprived. Inside the same districts, Black students were suspended at 2.2 (95% CI 2.1 to 2.4) times the rate of white students, a comparison drawn from 5,156 districts. The second part of the chapter moves from districts to census tracts. Among children from low-income families who grew up in tracts where the Opportunity Atlas estimates both groups, 5.2% (95% CI 5.0% to 5.3%) of Black children and 1.9% (95% CI 1.8% to 2.0%) of white children were incarcerated on Census Day 2010.

The two parts describe different children. The district records are for students enrolled in 2020 to 2021, and the Opportunity Atlas follows children born in 1978 to 1983 into adulthood. No data in the chapter link a suspended student to a later incarceration, so what the two parts share is the question of how unevenly each outcome falls across places and between groups of children.

How a district gets a suspension rate and a deprivation rank

The Civil Rights Data Collection gathers counts from every public school district for the Department of Education, and districts report their own counts. This chapter uses the 2020 to 2021 collection, with school counts summed to the 17,821 reporting districts (local education agencies). That year was disrupted by remote and hybrid teaching, so the levels describe an unusual year and are read here for gradients and gaps, not as typical rates. Summing the schools' counts gives 651,832 students suspended out of school that year, a student counted once for each school where they were suspended. School cells coded as suppressed or not reported add nothing to a district's sum.

A suspension rate is the number of students who received at least one out-of-school suspension, with and without disabilities, divided by the students enrolled, per thousand. A student suspended more than once at a school counts once there, a student suspended at two schools counts at each, and in-school suspensions are not included. The Collection counts Hispanic students of any race in their own group, so its Black and white students are not Hispanic. Expulsions are students expelled with or without educational services, and referrals to law enforcement and school-related arrests are counts of students at each stage, summed the same way. The Collection also counts expulsions under zero-tolerance policies, which are a subset of the expulsions with or without services and are not added again.

Deprivation is a tract measure, so a district needs a rank built from its tracts. The Area Deprivation Index ranks each tract nationally from the least to the most deprived.[1] A district's rank is the mean rank of the tracts assigned to it, weighted by tract population. Only districts known to the book's geography file (dim_geo), which assigns each tract to one school district, get a rank, which excludes charter, regional and single-grade-span districts. The index uses data for 2019 to 2023, close to the school year studied.

Of the 17,821 reporting districts, 10,257 (57.6%) have a rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count. They enroll 38.7 million students, 78.4% of all students in reporting districts.

Another 38 districts have a rank and enough students but report no suspension count, among them New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami-Dade. Their 6.2 million students are not in any estimate here.

Suspension rates rise with deprivation, with no clear order at the top

Ranking districts from least to most deprived and cutting them into tenths of equal numbers of districts, the suspension rate climbs steeply over the first four tenths, from 3.1 (95% CI 2.4 to 4.1) per thousand students in the least deprived tenth to 20.1 (95% CI 17.3 to 23.1) in the fourth. It rises more slowly to 26.9 (95% CI 24.1 to 29.7) in decile 8, and the most deprived tenth is at 23.6 (95% CI 20.2 to 27.3).

The highest tenth's rate minus the most deprived tenth's is +3.2 (95% CI −0.9 to 7.1) per thousand, and the interval includes zero, so the top three tenths cannot be told apart. The rate in the most deprived tenth is 7.6 (95% CI 5.5 to 10.6) times the rate in the least deprived. Across districts, weighted by enrollment, the rate and the deprivation rank have a correlation of +0.42 (95% CI 0.37 to 0.46). The interval is wider when whole states are resampled in place of counties (+0.42 (95% CI 0.31 to 0.51)).

Table 1. Out-of-school suspensions were more common in more deprived districts, at 3.1 per thousand students in the least deprived tenth of districts against 23.6 in the most deprived

20 districts have rates above the top of the figure's vertical axis and are left off the dots, though they are in every estimate.

States differ in their rates among the ranked states (see the map below), from 3.1 per thousand students in Washington (96.4% of students covered) to 43.6 in Arkansas (93.2% covered). Deprived districts are not spread evenly across states. Within a state, each ten-point step up the deprivation rank went with 1.9 (95% CI 1.3 to 2.6) more students suspended per thousand, so the gradient is not only a difference between states.

Every stage of exclusion is more common in the most deprived third of districts

Suspension is the widest stage. Among the 10,181 districts that report all four counts, 16.3 (95% CI 15.0 to 17.5) students per thousand were suspended, 1.73 (95% CI 1.55 to 1.90) were referred to law enforcement, 0.74 (95% CI 0.65 to 0.84) were expelled and 0.26 (95% CI 0.22 to 0.30) were arrested at school.

The three deeper stages are zero in most districts. Of these districts, 61.4% report no referrals, 75.5% no expulsions and 88.1% no arrests, so their rates come from a minority of districts.

Splitting the districts into thirds by deprivation, the rate in the most deprived third was 2.6 (95% CI 2.2 to 3.0) times the rate in the least deprived third for suspensions, 2.7 (95% CI 1.9 to 3.8) times for expulsions, 1.5 (95% CI 1.2 to 1.9) times for referrals and 1.8 (95% CI 1.2 to 2.5) times for arrests (Table 2). All four intervals lie above one.

For referrals and arrests the middle third is as high as the most deprived, at 1.7 (95% CI 1.3 to 2.0) and 2.1 (95% CI 1.5 to 3.0) times the least deprived third, so for those stages the rise is not steady across the thirds. The counts at each stage are students in a district, not students followed from one stage to the next, and the stages are not a sequence for any child.

Table 2. Every stage of school exclusion was more common in the most deprived third of districts than in the least deprived third

Black and white students in the same district

Earlier work found that Black students are suspended more often than white students. Skiba and colleagues used one year of middle-school discipline records from an urban district. They found that the gap in referrals, suspensions and expulsions remained after controlling for socioeconomic status, and that Black students were referred more often for infractions that depend on a teacher's interpretation.[2] The Government Accountability Office, analyzing national data for 2013 to 2014, found that Black students were a larger share of suspended students than of enrolled students, and that the disparity persisted regardless of a school's poverty level or type.[3]

A comparison inside one district removes the differences between districts that a state or county average mixes in. The comparison uses the 5,156 reporting districts that have at least 50 Black and as many white students and a reported count for each group. They enroll 33.3 million students and 71.3% of the Black students in the Collection.

Pooled over those districts, 30.7 (95% CI 22.7 to 39.1) Black students per thousand were suspended. Weighting each district's white rate by its Black enrollment gives the rate those Black students would have had at their own district's white rate, 13.7 (95% CI 10.1 to 17.0) per thousand. Black students were therefore suspended at 2.2 (95% CI 2.1 to 2.4) times the white rate in the same districts. The intervals resample states, because this comparison includes districts that cannot be placed in a county.

How many districts follow that pattern depends on how districts are counted. Counting each district once, the Black rate is higher than the white rate in 65.4% (95% CI 57.5% to 72.4%) of districts, lower in 19.9% (95% CI 17.3% to 22.4%) and equal in 14.7% (95% CI 9.7% to 20.7%), almost always because both are zero. Weighting each district by its Black enrollment raises the first share to 84.0% (95% CI 77.1% to 88.8%), because districts with more Black students are more likely to have a higher Black rate. A small district's rate rests on few suspensions, so the unweighted share carries more noise than the weighted one.

Table 3. The Black suspension rate was higher than the white rate in 20 of the 24 districts with the most Black students

Table 3 shows the 24 districts with the most Black students among those compared. They are chosen by Black enrollment and not by their rates, and the Black rate is higher in 20 of them. It is not higher in Detroit, Clayton County in Georgia, the District of Columbia and Henry County in Georgia. Detroit and Clayton County enroll few white students, and the District of Columbia reports rates close to zero for both groups.

Where suspension rates are highest

The map assigns each district to the county that holds most of its population and pools the districts of a county that report a count, weighted by enrollment. A county is drawn when those districts enroll at least 500 students and hold more than 75% of the students in all the districts assigned to it. That rule leaves out counties where a large district reports no count, such as Los Angeles and Cook counties. The map draws 2,812 counties.

The other 331 are gray. Of these, 33 are served by a district that reports no suspension count, among them the counties of New York City. Another 8 have districts that report no count holding a quarter or more of their students, 240 fall below the enrollment floor, and 50 have no district with a count assigned to them.

The highest tenth of county rates starts at 48.0 per thousand students and holds 282 counties. The rule for naming states is the number of counties in that tenth. 6 states have at least 15 of them, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, South Carolina and Louisiana.

Together these states hold 61.0% of the highest tenth. In each of them at least 25.3% of the drawn counties are in that tenth, against one tenth of all drawn counties by definition.

State rates need the same care, because the districts in the analysis hold only part of the students in some states. Among the 38 states where they hold at least 75% of enrolled students, the pooled rate runs from the Washington and Arkansas values above. Florida, Maryland and California are not ranked, because the districts in the analysis hold less than that share of their students. The key stops at 61 per thousand students, and 143 counties above it share the color at the top of the key. The map shows the counts that districts recorded in a disrupted year and says nothing about how children behaved. The Collection also records each school's type of instruction in 2020 to 2021 in a separate school-level file that this chapter does not use, so the map cannot separate discipline from how much teaching was in person.

Table 4. Counties in the highest tenth of suspension rates were concentrated in 6 states, which hold 61.0% of them

Incarceration across tracts

The rest of the chapter leaves school districts for census tracts and a different generation of children. The suspension counts above describe students enrolled in 2020 to 2021. The incarceration measure below describes children born in 1978 to 1983, and no record links a student in the Collection to a child in the Atlas.

The Opportunity Atlas links tax and census records for children born in 1978 to 1983 to the census tract where they grew up.[4] This chapter uses its incarceration measure for children whose parents were at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution. The measure is the share of children who were incarcerated on Census Day in 2010, when they were between their mid-twenties and early thirties. The staged files pool boys and girls, and the Atlas privacy noise is not clipped, so some tract estimates fall below zero.

Across the 71,478 tracts that have an estimate, a deprivation rank and a recorded 2010 population, the mean incarceration share is 2.1% (95% CI 2.0% to 2.2%), weighted by tract population. It is 1.1% (95% CI 1.0% to 1.2%) in the least deprived tenth of tracts and 3.3% (95% CI 3.1% to 3.5%) in the most deprived, and the tract rank and the share have a correlation of +0.28 (95% CI 0.25 to 0.30). The first tab of Table 5 shows that the rise is gradual across most of the range and steeper in the most deprived tenth.

The Atlas is built on 2010 tracts and the deprivation index on 2020 tracts, so each 2010 tract takes the land-area-weighted mean rank of the 2020 tracts that overlap it. The index uses data for 2019 to 2023 and the children grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, so the rank describes the tracts as they are now.

Table 5. Incarceration of children from low-income families rose with tract deprivation and was higher for Black than for white children in the same tracts

Black and white children raised in the same tract

The Atlas also reports incarceration separately for Black and white children, who are non-Hispanic in its race groups as they are in the Collection,[5] and that allows a comparison inside one tract. A tract qualifies when both estimates exist and its 2010 population is positive, the same rules as in Chapter 4.3, Race, income and mobility, which makes the same comparison for adult income and links back here for the incarceration result. In all, 27,795 tracts in 1,468 counties qualify, and they hold 130.5 million people, 42.3% of the 2010 population. The tracts with both estimates are those with enough children of both groups, so they are not a sample of all tracts.

In these tracts, weighted by population, 5.2% (95% CI 5.0% to 5.3%) of Black children from low-income families were incarcerated against 1.9% (95% CI 1.8% to 2.0%) of white children, a gap of 3.2 (95% CI 3.1 to 3.4) points and a ratio of 2.7 (95% CI 2.5 to 2.8). The Black share is higher than the white share in 73.8% (95% CI 72.9% to 74.7%) of these tracts.

Each tract estimate rests on a modest number of children, and the Atlas adds noise to protect privacy. Noise of that kind spreads the Black and white estimates in both directions, so it pulls the share of tracts with a higher Black rate toward an even split, not away from one.

The gap is present at every level of tract deprivation (the second tab of Table 5). In the least deprived tenth of these tracts, 3.8% (95% CI 3.4% to 4.2%) of Black children and 1.2% (95% CI 1.1% to 1.4%) of white children were incarcerated, a gap of 2.6 (95% CI 2.2 to 2.9) points.

In the most deprived tenth the shares were 6.4% (95% CI 6.1% to 6.7%) and 2.6% (95% CI 2.4% to 2.8%), a gap of 3.8 (95% CI 3.4 to 4.1). The gap in points is larger in the most deprived tenth.

The ratio of the Black share to the white share is smaller in the most deprived tenth, 2.5 (95% CI 2.2 to 2.7) against 3.1 (95% CI 2.6 to 3.5), a fall of 0.6 (95% CI 0.1 to 1.1). Black children in the least deprived tenth of tracts were incarcerated more often than white children in the most deprived tenth, by 1.2 (95% CI 0.7 to 1.6) points. The gap does not close when tracts are compared at the same level of deprivation.

Evidence on whether suspension and detention change later outcomes

The comparisons above are descriptions. Two studies test whether being suspended or incarcerated changes what happens next, and each is reported under its own design.

Both estimates apply to the settings studied, one school district and one county, and to the years of those data. Neither says why suspension rates or incarceration shares differ across the districts and tracts in this chapter.

Incarceration of Black children rises with deprivation under all four rankings

Table 6 ranks the 25,827 tracts where Black and white children are both estimated and that have all four rankings in four ways, with each ranking carried to 2010 tracts by the same land-area crosswalk as the ADI. Ranked by the ADI on this common sample, the share of Black children from low-income families who were incarcerated is 3.7% (95% CI 3.3% to 4.1%) in the least deprived tenth and 6.3% (95% CI 6.0% to 6.7%) in the most deprived, and the rank correlation between tenth and share is +1.00. Under the standardized index the two ends are 3.9% (95% CI 3.6% to 4.2%) and 6.4% (95% CI 6.1% to 6.7%), with a correlation of +0.98. Under median household income they are 3.8% (95% CI 3.5% to 4.1%) and 6.2% (95% CI 5.9% to 6.5%), and under the bachelor's degree share 4.1% (95% CI 3.7% to 4.5%) and 6.2% (95% CI 5.9% to 6.5%), with correlations of +1.00 and +1.00, so none of the alternatives counts as a change under the book's rule (Chapter 9.1, How far one ranking goes).

Table 6. Incarceration of Black children from low-income families is steadily worse toward the more deprived end under the ADI and under each of the three other rankings

What these data cannot show

A suspension rate records what districts reported, not what children did. A higher rate in a deprived district, or for Black students, is consistent with more disruptive conduct, with harsher responses to the same conduct, with both, and with differences in how districts count, and these data cannot tell them apart. The counts are for a pandemic year, are self-reported, and omit the suppressed cells. The 38 districts with no count include some of the largest in the country, and charter, regional and single-grade-span districts have no deprivation rank, so the districts here are not all of the districts. In several states, among them Florida, Maryland and California, the districts in the analysis hold less than 75% of enrolled students, so no state rate is given for them. The Area Deprivation Index understates deprivation in high-cost cities (Chapter 1.1, What the deprivation index measures), and a district's rank averages over tracts that differ a great deal. The map assigns each district to one county although some span several.

The incarceration part has its own limits. The Atlas measures incarceration on one day, so it counts who was incarcerated on that day and not who was ever incarcerated. It pools girls and boys, because race by gender is not in the staged data. Each tract estimate is noisy, the weights are tract population and not the number of children, and a tract with both a Black and a white estimate is one with enough children of both groups. A same-tract comparison removes differences between neighborhoods but not differences in family wealth, in the block, in schools or in how police and courts treat the children. Both parts describe places and groups, not individual children, and they describe different cohorts. No child here is followed from a suspension to a later incarceration, and the districts of 2020 to 2021 are not the tracts where the children of 1978 to 1983 grew up.

Tables

Table 1. Out-of-school suspensions were more common in more deprived districts, at 3.1 per thousand students in the least deprived tenth of districts against 23.6 in the most deprived

Students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled, by the district's deprivation rank (mean Area Deprivation Index national rank of its tracts), one dot per district, 2020-21 school year

No inline rows: the values of Table 1 are in /data/school-discipline-and-incarceration/suspension_dose.json.

Note: Every district with at least 100 students enrolled and a reported suspension count is plotted, out of 10,257 districts; 20 of them have a rate above the top of the vertical axis and are not drawn, but they are in every estimate.

Note: The suspension rate is the number of students who received at least one out-of-school suspension, whether once or more than once, divided by the students enrolled. Deciles hold equal numbers of districts.

Note: Districts report these counts themselves and a single district's rate carries no sampling interval; the decile means and the correlation resample counties. Resampling states instead gives a wider interval for the correlation: +0.42.

Source: Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020-2021 school year, and Area Deprivation Index, 2023; enrollment-weighted district rates, full counts reported by districts

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/suspension_dose.json

Table 2. Every stage of school exclusion was more common in the most deprived third of districts than in the least deprived third

Four stages of exclusion from out-of-school suspension to school-related arrest, districts ranked on deprivation, 2020-21 school year

Table 2.1. Relative to the least deprived third

Each stage was more common in the most deprived third of districts, from 1.5 times the rate in the least deprived third for law-enforcement referrals to 2.7 times for expulsions

Rate in each third of districts divided by the rate in the least deprived third, by stage of exclusion, 2020-21 school year

conf_high	conf_low	n	ratio	stage	tercile
n/a	n/a	3,393	1	Out-of-school suspension	Least deprived third
2.60	1.90	3,394	2.22	Out-of-school suspension	Middle third
3.03	2.23	3,394	2.60	Out-of-school suspension	Most deprived third
n/a	n/a	3,393	1	Expulsion	Least deprived third
3.15	1.62	3,394	2.24	Expulsion	Middle third
3.83	1.94	3,394	2.72	Expulsion	Most deprived third
n/a	n/a	3,393	1	Referral to law enforcement	Least deprived third
2.04	1.33	3,394	1.65	Referral to law enforcement	Middle third
1.91	1.15	3,394	1.46	Referral to law enforcement	Most deprived third
n/a	n/a	3,393	1	School-related arrest	Least deprived third
2.97	1.48	3,394	2.10	School-related arrest	Middle third
2.53	1.24	3,394	1.79	School-related arrest	Most deprived third

Table 2.2. Rates per 1,000 students

Suspension was the widest stage, at 16.3 per thousand students, against 1.73 for referrals to law enforcement, 0.74 for expulsions and 0.26 for arrests

Students per 1,000 enrolled at each stage, pooled over districts, by third of districts ranked on deprivation, 2020-21 school year

Stage	Least deprived third	Middle third	Most deprived third	All districts
Out-of-school suspension	9.85	21.85	25.59	16.27
Expulsion	0.44	0.99	1.20	0.74
Referral to law enforcement	1.35	2.23	1.97	1.73
School-related arrest	0.18	0.37	0.32	0.26

Note: Thirds hold equal numbers of the 10,181 districts that report all four counts. Each count is students at that stage, summed over a district's schools, not students followed from one stage to the next. Expulsions are students expelled with or without educational services; the zero-tolerance expulsions are a subset of those and are not added.

Note: Intervals resample counties; the rates are full counts reported by districts and carry no sampling interval for a single district.

Source: Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020-2021 school year, and Area Deprivation Index, 2023; enrollment-weighted district rates, full counts reported by districts

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/exclusion_funnel.json

Table 3. The Black suspension rate was higher than the white rate in 20 of the 24 districts with the most Black students

Students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 enrolled, white and Black students in the same district, the districts with the most Black students among those compared, 2020-21 school year

black	district	enrolled_black	enrolled_white	white
20.20	Gwinnett County, GA	57324	34490	12.90
2.10	DeKalb County, GA	55373	10603	1.30
2	Detroit Public Schools Community District, MI	38939	1177	8.50
15.50	Fulton County, GA	38322	23278	7.40
1.70	Atlanta Public Schools, GA	36901	8293	0.600
0.500	Clayton County, GA	36290	906	1.10
20.30	Cobb County, GA	32741	37526	10.20
6	Guilford County Schools, NC	29379	20193	2.30
50.50	East Baton Rouge Parish, LA	28779	4625	20.30
0	District of Columbia Public Schools, DC	28480	8188	0.100
154.9	Mobile County, AL	26493	19746	62.50
8.30	Columbus City School District, OH	24713	10015	4
12.50	Henry County, GA	24436	9752	17.40
45.40	Caddo Parish, LA	22967	10152	16.40
3.90	Cumberland County Schools, NC	22600	13156	1.70
10.40	Montgomery County, AL	22309	2261	2.70
13.60	Cincinnati Public Schools, OH	22032	7849	3.70
27.20	Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, TX	22025	25629	6.80
43.30	Richmond County, GA	21883	4380	30.10
2.50	Cleveland Municipal, OH	21492	5006	1.40
13.70	Fort Bend ISD, TX	21133	11341	4.40
3.60	Savannah-Chatham County, GA	21072	8018	1.60
2.60	Jackson Public School District, MS	19542	260	0
16.30	Birmingham City, AL	19186	403	5

Note: The rates are full counts reported by the districts, so they carry no sampling interval; a rate in a district with few students of one group rests on few suspensions. The suspension rate is the number of students who received at least one out-of-school suspension, whether once or more than once, divided by the students enrolled.

Note: Districts are named as the Collection lists them. The Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2020-2021 school year was disrupted by remote and hybrid teaching, and districts report their own counts, so the levels describe an unusual year. Suppressed school cells add nothing to a district's sum.

Source: Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020-2021 school year; full counts reported by districts, crude rates

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/suspension_black_white.json

Table 4. Counties in the highest tenth of suspension rates were concentrated in 6 states, which hold 61.0% of them

Students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled, school districts assigned to the county that holds most of their population, 2020-21 school year

No inline rows: the values of Table 4 are in /data/school-discipline-and-incarceration/suspension_map.json.

Note: A county is drawn when the districts assigned to it that report a count enroll at least 500 students and hold more than 75% of the students in all the districts assigned to it. Of the gray counties, 33 are served by a district that reports no suspension count (the counties of New York City are among them), 8 have districts that report no count holding a quarter or more of their students, 240 fall below the enrollment floor and 50 have no district with a count assigned to them.

Note: States where the districts in the analysis hold less than 75% of the enrolled students, among them Florida, Maryland and California, are left out of the ranking of state rates. The highest tenth of county rates starts at 48.0 per thousand students and holds 282 counties.

Note: The key stops at 61 per thousand students, the rounded 95th percentile of county rates, and 143 counties above it share the color at the top of the key.

Note: Charter, regional and single-grade-span districts that cannot be matched to a unified district are left out, so a county's rate covers the districts that can be placed. A district that spans counties counts in the county that holds most of its population. Connecticut counties are the eight legacy counties, Alaska is drawn, and Puerto Rico is not drawn.

Note: The Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2020-2021 school year was disrupted by remote and hybrid teaching, and districts report their own counts, so the levels describe an unusual year. Suppressed school cells add nothing to a district's sum. The Collection also records each school's type of instruction in a separate school-level file that this chapter does not use, so the map cannot separate discipline from how much teaching was in person.

Source: Civil Rights Data Collection, 2020-2021 school year, and Area Deprivation Index, 2023; enrollment-weighted district rates, full counts reported by districts

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/suspension_map.json

Table 5. Incarceration of children from low-income families rose with tract deprivation and was higher for Black than for white children in the same tracts

Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010, among children from low-income families born 1978 to 1983, by the deprivation of the tract where they grew up, ranked on 2019-2023 data

Table 5.1. All children, by deprivation

Incarceration of children from low-income families rose with tract deprivation, from 1.1% in the least deprived tenth of tracts to 3.3% in the most deprived

Percent of children from low-income families incarcerated on April 1, 2010, by percentile of the tract's Area Deprivation Index national rank (built from 2019-2023 data), races pooled, children born 1978 to 1983

conf_high	conf_low	estimate	n	percentile
1.02	0.480	0.756	630	1
1.02	0.572	0.782	642	2
1.12	0.785	0.961	566	3
1.15	0.825	0.967	748	4
1.26	0.847	1.04	614	5
1.40	0.948	1.15	765	6
1.23	0.845	1.03	587	7
1.43	1.06	1.23	775	8
1.43	1.02	1.21	623	9
1.44	1.05	1.24	796	10
1.55	1.19	1.36	565	11
1.43	1.07	1.24	823	12
1.44	1.11	1.29	647	13
1.43	1.10	1.26	824	14
1.54	1.18	1.36	649	15
1.69	1.37	1.51	846	16
1.66	1.26	1.47	644	17
1.63	1.37	1.50	832	18
1.77	1.43	1.60	661	19
1.73	1.45	1.59	815	20
1.71	1.40	1.56	618	21
1.86	1.47	1.65	820	22
1.85	1.46	1.65	597	23
1.86	1.58	1.71	825	24
1.86	1.53	1.69	643	25
1.82	1.52	1.67	825	26
1.93	1.58	1.75	651	27
1.88	1.58	1.73	778	28
1.78	1.49	1.63	593	29
1.97	1.62	1.80	878	30
1.92	1.60	1.75	647	31
2.08	1.76	1.91	790	32
1.96	1.64	1.79	612	33
2.05	1.77	1.91	781	34
2.16	1.81	1.98	633	35
1.90	1.65	1.78	805	36
2.19	1.78	1.99	665	37
2.13	1.80	1.97	809	38
2.08	1.78	1.93	591	39
2.08	1.75	1.91	753	40
2.19	1.85	2.02	662	41
2.20	1.89	2.05	840	42
2.08	1.74	1.91	619	43
2.14	1.83	1.99	792	44
2.31	1.97	2.14	638	45
2.26	1.94	2.10	809	46
2.23	1.93	2.08	622	47
2.39	2.05	2.21	837	48
2.38	2.05	2.21	605	49
2.32	1.98	2.14	853	50
2.32	2.00	2.16	658	51
2.42	2.13	2.28	819	52
2.26	1.97	2.11	687	53
2.29	2.00	2.14	828	54
2.24	1.98	2.11	647	55
2.44	2.14	2.29	831	56
2.38	2.08	2.23	638	57
2.41	2.14	2.27	842	58
2.44	2.17	2.31	724	59
2.61	2.32	2.46	822	60
2.60	2.31	2.45	673	61
2.51	2.21	2.35	853	62
2.45	2.14	2.31	638	63
2.56	2.27	2.41	807	64
2.45	2.17	2.31	708	65
2.43	2.15	2.29	847	66
2.53	2.24	2.39	694	67
2.61	2.26	2.44	859	68
2.44	2.12	2.28	665	69
2.67	2.36	2.52	824	70
2.59	2.28	2.44	678	71
2.60	2.30	2.45	837	72
2.58	2.25	2.42	667	73
2.60	2.26	2.43	832	74
2.65	2.32	2.49	725	75
2.67	2.36	2.51	787	76
2.70	2.38	2.54	650	77
2.66	2.37	2.51	851	78
2.65	2.34	2.50	709	79
2.62	2.32	2.46	848	80
2.70	2.35	2.53	642	81
2.88	2.56	2.73	833	82
2.70	2.38	2.54	646	83
2.88	2.52	2.70	766	84
2.67	2.30	2.48	643	85
2.86	2.52	2.69	835	86
2.83	2.46	2.65	611	87
2.86	2.53	2.69	730	88
2.91	2.52	2.72	649	89
2.93	2.54	2.73	782	90
3.11	2.68	2.89	579	91
3.17	2.76	2.96	747	92
3.26	2.74	3.00	576	93
3.49	2.88	3.20	694	94
3.49	3.00	3.24	528	95
3.75	3.24	3.49	648	96
3.89	3.29	3.59	525	97
4.15	3.67	3.91	603	98
4.44	3.90	4.18	547	99
4.51	3.96	4.23	603	100

Table 5.2. Black and white children in the same tracts

Black children from low-income families were incarcerated more often than white children from the same tracts at every level of tract deprivation

Percent of children from low-income families incarcerated on April 1, 2010, by tenth of the tract's Area Deprivation Index national rank (built from 2019-2023 data), Black and white children in the same tracts, children born 1978 to 1983

conf_high	conf_low	decile	estimate	group	n
4.17	3.40	1	3.80	Black children	2,742
4.80	4.13	2	4.46	Black children	2,796
5.08	4.51	3	4.79	Black children	2,767
5.30	4.75	4	5.02	Black children	2,791
5.61	5.08	5	5.33	Black children	2,756
5.76	5.31	6	5.52	Black children	2,762
5.74	5.32	7	5.52	Black children	2,761
6.03	5.55	8	5.79	Black children	2,776
6.10	5.59	9	5.84	Black children	2,770
6.68	6.06	10	6.37	Black children	2,769
1.41	1.09	1	1.23	White children	2,742
1.61	1.33	2	1.47	White children	2,796
1.75	1.52	3	1.64	White children	2,767
2.03	1.80	4	1.92	White children	2,791
2.23	1.87	5	2.05	White children	2,756
2.29	1.97	6	2.13	White children	2,762
2.39	2.07	7	2.23	White children	2,761
2.42	2.10	8	2.25	White children	2,776
2.45	2.17	9	2.32	White children	2,770
2.81	2.40	10	2.59	White children	2,769

Note: Children were born in 1978 to 1983 and the incarceration share is for April 1, 2010. The Opportunity Atlas adds noise to its estimates to protect privacy and the staged values are never clipped, so some tract values are below zero. Genders are pooled.

Note: Each tract is weighted by its 2010 census population, the nearest stand-in for the number of children because the Atlas file has no child counts. Counting each tract once gives similar results.

Note: The Area Deprivation Index is defined on 2020 tracts. A 2010 tract takes the land-area-weighted mean rank of the 2020 tracts that overlap it, which is an approximation where boundaries changed. Tenths hold equal numbers of tracts.

Note: Tract estimates rest on a modest number of children. A tract is in the second tab only if both the Black and the white estimate exist, so these are tracts with sizeable populations of both groups and not a sample of all tracts.

Note: Across all the tracts in the second tab the incarceration share is 5.2% for Black children and 1.9% for white children.

Source: Opportunity Atlas, 1978-1983 birth cohorts, 2010 tracts, and Area Deprivation Index, 2023; population-weighted (2010 tract population), modeled estimates

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/incarceration_gradient.json

Table 6. Incarceration of Black children from low-income families is steadily worse toward the more deprived end under the ADI and under each of the three other rankings

Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010 by tenth of tracts ranked four ways, over the 25,827 tracts that have all four rankings

bin	conf_high	conf_low	estimate	n_units	ranking
1	4.08	3.27	3.71	2,585	Area Deprivation Index
2	4.88	4.17	4.53	2,597	Area Deprivation Index
3	5.05	4.47	4.76	2,568	Area Deprivation Index
4	5.28	4.72	4.99	2,571	Area Deprivation Index
5	5.61	5.09	5.34	2,592	Area Deprivation Index
6	5.71	5.27	5.49	2,583	Area Deprivation Index
7	5.80	5.34	5.56	2,541	Area Deprivation Index
8	6.03	5.51	5.76	2,624	Area Deprivation Index
9	6.15	5.62	5.88	2,599	Area Deprivation Index
10	6.66	6.04	6.35	2,567	Area Deprivation Index
1	4.24	3.61	3.92	2,582	Standardized index
2	4.59	4.03	4.31	2,583	Standardized index
3	5.33	4.80	5.07	2,583	Standardized index
4	5.31	4.82	5.06	2,582	Standardized index
5	5.41	4.94	5.18	2,583	Standardized index
6	5.78	5.27	5.52	2,583	Standardized index
7	5.77	5.30	5.54	2,582	Standardized index
8	5.77	5.33	5.54	2,583	Standardized index
9	6.11	5.55	5.83	2,583	Standardized index
10	6.73	6.13	6.43	2,583	Standardized index
1	4.11	3.48	3.80	2,582	Median household income
2	4.89	4.33	4.60	2,583	Median household income
3	5.03	4.49	4.76	2,583	Median household income
4	5.38	4.84	5.12	2,582	Median household income
5	5.55	5.10	5.32	2,584	Median household income
6	5.63	5.18	5.39	2,583	Median household income
7	6.00	5.47	5.74	2,581	Median household income
8	6.01	5.52	5.76	2,583	Median household income
9	6.05	5.55	5.80	2,583	Median household income
10	6.46	5.90	6.17	2,583	Median household income
1	4.47	3.73	4.10	2,582	Bachelor's degree share
2	4.80	4.20	4.50	2,583	Bachelor's degree share
3	5.09	4.55	4.81	2,583	Bachelor's degree share
4	5.35	4.83	5.08	2,583	Bachelor's degree share
5	5.50	4.99	5.24	2,582	Bachelor's degree share
6	5.57	5.02	5.30	2,583	Bachelor's degree share
7	5.65	5.16	5.40	2,581	Bachelor's degree share
8	5.78	5.30	5.54	2,584	Bachelor's degree share
9	6.05	5.59	5.81	2,583	Bachelor's degree share
10	6.45	5.86	6.16	2,583	Bachelor's degree share

Note: Least and most deprived tenth: ADI 3.7% and 6.3%, rank correlation +1.00; standardized index 3.9% and 6.4%, +0.98; median household income 3.8% and 6.2%, +1.00; bachelor's degree share 4.1% and 6.2%, +1.00.

Note: The standardized index applies the ADI's coefficients to its measures after standardizing each one, so home value and income carry less weight than in the ADI. Income and degree share are single census measures, each ranked from the highest value to the lowest.

Source: Opportunity Atlas, 1978-1983 birth cohorts, 2010 tracts, and Area Deprivation Index, 2023; population-weighted (2010 tract population), modeled estimates; ADI 2023 and ACS 2019-2023 tract tables (B19013, B15003 and the 15 rebuilt ADI measures)

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/alt_rankings.json

All estimates

Every fact in facts.json (109), sorted by id. The same values as JSON: facts.json.

Fact id	Value	Unit	Estimand	Population	Period	Interval	n	Weights	Source	Note
alt_adi_least	3.7%	Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean of the tract incarceration share of Black children from low-income families (2010 tract population as the weight), over the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated; 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties	the least deprived tenth of tracts ranked by Area Deprivation Index, among the tracts with all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 3.3% to 4.1%	2,585 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
alt_adi_most	6.3%	Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean of the tract incarceration share of Black children from low-income families (2010 tract population as the weight), over the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated; 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties	the most deprived tenth of tracts ranked by Area Deprivation Index, among the tracts with all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 6.0% to 6.7%	2,567 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
alt_adi_rho	+1.00	rank correlation	Spearman rank correlation between bin order and bin mean, each bin counted once	the bins of tracts ranked by Area Deprivation Index	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			each bin counted once	Opportunity Atlas
alt_degree_least	4.1%	Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean of the tract incarceration share of Black children from low-income families (2010 tract population as the weight), over the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated; 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties	the least deprived tenth of tracts ranked by Bachelor's degree share, among the tracts with all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 3.7% to 4.5%	2,582 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
alt_degree_most	6.2%	Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean of the tract incarceration share of Black children from low-income families (2010 tract population as the weight), over the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated; 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties	the most deprived tenth of tracts ranked by Bachelor's degree share, among the tracts with all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 5.9% to 6.5%	2,583 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
alt_degree_rho	+1.00	rank correlation	Spearman rank correlation between bin order and bin mean, each bin counted once	the bins of tracts ranked by Bachelor's degree share	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			each bin counted once	Opportunity Atlas
alt_income_least	3.8%	Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean of the tract incarceration share of Black children from low-income families (2010 tract population as the weight), over the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated; 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties	the least deprived tenth of tracts ranked by Median household income, among the tracts with all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 3.5% to 4.1%	2,582 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
alt_income_most	6.2%	Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean of the tract incarceration share of Black children from low-income families (2010 tract population as the weight), over the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated; 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties	the most deprived tenth of tracts ranked by Median household income, among the tracts with all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 5.9% to 6.5%	2,583 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
alt_income_rho	+1.00	rank correlation	Spearman rank correlation between bin order and bin mean, each bin counted once	the bins of tracts ranked by Median household income	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			each bin counted once	Opportunity Atlas
alt_n_places	25,827	tracts	count of tracts in the common sample of the ranking comparison	tracts with the outcome and all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			none (full count)	Opportunity Atlas
alt_rho_cut	0.9	absolute rank correlation	threshold between a steady and an uneven gradient	the rule for changed gradients (docs/RANKING_SWITCH_RULE.md)	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			none (a fixed rule)	Opportunity Atlas
alt_rho_margin	0.1	absolute rank correlation	smallest move in the rank correlation that counts as a change of shape	the rule for changed gradients (docs/RANKING_SWITCH_RULE.md)	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			none (a fixed rule)	Opportunity Atlas
alt_std_least	3.9%	Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean of the tract incarceration share of Black children from low-income families (2010 tract population as the weight), over the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated; 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties	the least deprived tenth of tracts ranked by Standardized index, among the tracts with all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 3.6% to 4.2%	2,582 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
alt_std_most	6.4%	Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean of the tract incarceration share of Black children from low-income families (2010 tract population as the weight), over the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated; 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties	the most deprived tenth of tracts ranked by Standardized index, among the tracts with all four rankings	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 6.1% to 6.7%	2,583 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
alt_std_rho	+0.98	rank correlation	Spearman rank correlation between bin order and bin mean, each bin counted once	the bins of tracts ranked by Standardized index	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			each bin counted once	Opportunity Atlas
arr_mid_x	2.1	ratio of the school-related arrest rate in the middle third of districts to the rate in the least deprived third	ratio of pooled rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 1.5 to 3.0	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
arr_terc_x	1.8	ratio of the school-related arrest rate in the most deprived third of districts to the rate in the least deprived third	ratio of pooled rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 1.2 to 2.5	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
bw_black_cover	71.3%	percent of Black students enrolled	share of all Black enrollment that sits in the districts of the comparison	Black students in the reporting districts	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
bw_equal_u	14.7%	percent of districts in which the two rates are equal	share of districts, bootstrap interval over states	districts in the Black-white comparison	2020-21 school year	95% CI 9.7% to 20.7%	5,156 districts	none (each district counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
bw_floor	50	students enrolled in each group	minimum Black and minimum white enrollment (a rule, not an estimate)	districts in the comparison	2020-21 school year			none (inclusion rule)	Civil Rights Data Collection
bw_n	5,156	school districts	count of districts with at least 50 Black and as many white students and a reported count for each	school districts (local education agencies) that reported to the Civil Rights Data Collection	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
bw_students	33.3 million	students enrolled	sum of total enrollment in the districts of the comparison	all students in the districts of the comparison	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
bw_white_higher_u	19.9%	percent of districts in which the white rate is higher than the Black rate	share of districts, bootstrap interval over states	districts in the Black-white comparison	2020-21 school year	95% CI 17.3% to 22.4%	5,156 districts	none (each district counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
cloud_above	20	school districts	districts with a rate above the top of the scatter's vertical axis, which are in every estimate but not drawn	districts in the dose	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
cov_floor	75%	percent of enrolled students	minimum share of students in the districts that report a count (a rule, not an estimate)	counties drawn and states ranked on the map	2020-21 school year			none (inclusion rule)	Civil Rights Data Collection
exp_terc_x	2.7	ratio of the expulsion rate in the most deprived third of districts to the rate in the least deprived third	ratio of pooled rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 1.9 to 3.8	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
fn_arr	0.26	students per 1,000 enrolled: school-related arrest	enrollment-weighted mean of district rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 0.22 to 0.30	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
fn_exp	0.74	students per 1,000 enrolled: expulsion	enrollment-weighted mean of district rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 0.65 to 0.84	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
fn_n	10,181	school districts	count of districts in the funnel	districts in the dose with all four counts reported	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
fn_oss	16.3	students per 1,000 enrolled: out-of-school suspension	enrollment-weighted mean of district rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 15.0 to 17.5	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
fn_ref	1.73	students per 1,000 enrolled: referral to law enforcement	enrollment-weighted mean of district rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 1.55 to 1.90	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
fn_zero_arr	88.1%	percent of districts reporting a count of zero for school-related arrest	share of districts (each counted once) whose count is zero	districts in the funnel	2020-21 school year		10,181 districts	none (each district counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
fn_zero_exp	75.5%	percent of districts reporting a count of zero for expulsion	share of districts (each counted once) whose count is zero	districts in the funnel	2020-21 school year		10,181 districts	none (each district counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
fn_zero_ref	61.4%	percent of districts reporting a count of zero for referral to law enforcement	share of districts (each counted once) whose count is zero	districts in the funnel	2020-21 school year		10,181 districts	none (each district counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
inc_black	5.2%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties	Black children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas also estimates the other group	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 5.0% to 5.3%	27,795 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas	Counting each tract once gives a similar mean.
inc_black_d1	3.8%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties; tenths hold equal numbers of tracts	Black children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in the least deprived tenth of tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 3.4% to 4.2%	2,742 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_black_d10	6.4%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties; tenths hold equal numbers of tracts	Black children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in the most deprived tenth of tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 6.1% to 6.7%	2,769 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_cross_diff	1.2	percentage points of incarceration: Black children in the least deprived tenth of tracts minus white children in the most deprived tenth	difference of two population-weighted tenth means, bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas estimates both Black and white children and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 0.7 to 1.6	27,690 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_d1	1.1%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties; tenths hold equal numbers of tracts	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), races pooled, in tracts that have an incarceration estimate and a deprivation rank, in the least deprived tenth of tracts	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 1.0% to 1.2%	7,147 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_d10	3.3%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties; tenths hold equal numbers of tracts	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), races pooled, in tracts that have an incarceration estimate and a deprivation rank, in the most deprived tenth of tracts	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 3.1% to 3.5%	7,233 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_gap	3.2	percentage points of incarceration, Black minus white	mean over tracts of the Black minus white difference, population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas estimates both Black and white children	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 3.1 to 3.4	27,795 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_gap_d1	2.6	percentage points of incarceration, Black minus white	mean over tracts of the Black minus white difference, population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in the least deprived tenth of tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 2.2 to 2.9	2,742 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_gap_d10	3.8	percentage points of incarceration, Black minus white	mean over tracts of the Black minus white difference, population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in the most deprived tenth of tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 3.4 to 4.1	2,769 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_mean	2.1%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), races pooled, in tracts that have an incarceration estimate and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 2.0% to 2.2%	71,478 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas	Counting each tract once gives a similar mean.
inc_n_shared	27,795	tracts	count of tracts	2010 census tracts with an incarceration estimate for Black and for white children and a positive 2010 population	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			none (full count)	Opportunity Atlas
inc_n_tracts	71,478	tracts	count of tracts	2010 census tracts with an incarceration estimate, a deprivation rank and a positive 2010 population	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			none (full count)	Opportunity Atlas
inc_r_adi	+0.28	correlation coefficient	population-weighted correlation of the tract incarceration share with the tract deprivation rank, bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), races pooled, in tracts that have an incarceration estimate and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 0.25 to 0.30	71,478 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_ratio	2.7	ratio of the Black to the white incarceration share	ratio of the population-weighted means over tracts, bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas estimates both Black and white children	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 2.5 to 2.8	27,795 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_ratio_d1	3.1	ratio of the Black to the white incarceration share	ratio of the population-weighted tenth means, bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in the least deprived tenth of tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 2.6 to 3.5	2,742 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_ratio_d10	2.5	ratio of the Black to the white incarceration share	ratio of the population-weighted tenth means, bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in the most deprived tenth of tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 2.2 to 2.7	2,769 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_ratio_fall	0.6	ratio of the Black to the white incarceration share in the least deprived tenth of tracts minus the ratio in the most deprived tenth	difference of two ratios of population-weighted tenth means, bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas estimates both Black and white children and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 0.1 to 1.1	27,690 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_share_bw	73.8%	percent of tracts in which the Black incarceration share is higher than the white share	share of tracts (each counted once), bootstrap interval over counties	children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas estimates both Black and white children	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 72.9% to 74.7%	27,795 tracts	none (each tract counts once)	Opportunity Atlas	Weighting tracts by 2010 population gives a similar share. Privacy noise pulls a share like this toward an even split.
inc_shared_counties	1,468	counties	count of counties	counties with at least one tract in the comparison	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010			none (full count)	Opportunity Atlas
inc_shared_pop	130.5 million	people	sum of 2010 census tract population	residents of the tracts in the same-tract comparison	2010 census			none (full count)	Opportunity Atlas
inc_shared_pop_share	42.3%	percent of the 2010 U.S. population	population of the same-tract comparison tracts as a share of the U.S. population	residents of the United States	2010 census			none (full count)	Opportunity Atlas
inc_white	1.9%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties	white children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in tracts where the Atlas also estimates the other group	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 1.8% to 2.0%	27,795 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas	Counting each tract once gives a similar mean.
inc_white_d1	1.2%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties; tenths hold equal numbers of tracts	white children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in the least deprived tenth of tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 1.1% to 1.4%	2,742 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
inc_white_d10	2.6%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties; tenths hold equal numbers of tracts	white children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in the most deprived tenth of tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 2.4% to 2.8%	2,769 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
map_floor	500	students enrolled	minimum enrollment in a county's districts for the county to be drawn (a rule, not an estimate)	counties on the map	2020-21 school year			none (inclusion rule)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_key_top	61	students suspended per 1,000 enrolled	top of the map key, the 95th percentile of county rates rounded to a whole number; higher rates take the top color	counties drawn	2020-21 school year			none (each county counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_n_above_key	143	counties	count of counties with a rate above the top of the key	counties drawn	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_n_below_floor	240	counties	count of counties whose assigned districts enroll fewer students than the floor	counties and county equivalents on the map	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_n_drawn	2,812	counties	count of counties with a rate	counties and county equivalents on the map	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_n_no_district	50	counties	count of counties to which no district is assigned	counties and county equivalents on the map	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_n_not_drawn	331	counties	count of counties with no rate	counties and county equivalents on the map	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_n_partial	8	counties	count of counties whose assigned districts that report no count hold a quarter or more of the students	counties and county equivalents on the map	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_n_unreported	33	counties	count of counties whose assigned districts all report no suspension count	counties and county equivalents on the map	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_top_cut	48.0	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	90th percentile of county rates; counties at or above it are the highest tenth	counties drawn	2020-21 school year		2,812 counties	none (each county counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_top_min	15	counties in the highest tenth	minimum number of counties in the highest tenth for a state to be named (a rule, not an estimate)	states named on the map	2020-21 school year			none (inclusion rule)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_top_n	282	counties	count of counties at or above the 90th percentile	counties in the highest tenth of county rates	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_top_states_min_share	25.3%	percent of a state's drawn counties that are in the highest tenth of rates	the smallest, over those states, of the share of the state's drawn counties in the highest tenth	drawn counties in the states that meet the rule	2020-21 school year			none (each county counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_top_states_n	6	states	count of states that meet the rule	states with at least the minimum number of counties in the highest tenth	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
map_top_states_share	61.0%	percent of counties in the highest tenth of rates	share of those counties that lie in the states that meet the rule	counties in the highest tenth of county rates	2020-21 school year		282 counties	none (each county counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
n_big_blackhi	20	school districts	count of districts whose Black suspension rate is higher than the white rate	the 24 districts with the most Black students among those compared	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
n_dumbbell	24	school districts	count of districts drawn (chosen by Black enrollment, not by their rates)	districts with the most Black students among those compared	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
n_lea	17,821	school districts	count of reporting districts	school districts (local education agencies) that reported to the Civil Rights Data Collection	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
n_states_ranked	38	states	count of states ranked on state rates (DC and Puerto Rico left out)	states where the districts in the analysis hold at least the coverage floor of enrolled students	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_black	30.7	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	Black students suspended over Black students enrolled, pooled over districts, bootstrap interval over states	Black students enrolled in the 5156 districts with at least 50 Black and as many white students and a reported suspension count for each group	2020-21 school year	95% CI 22.7 to 39.1	5,156 districts	Black enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_cover_districts	57.6%	percent of reporting districts	share of reporting districts that enter the dose	school districts (local education agencies) that reported to the Civil Rights Data Collection	2020-21 school year			none (each district counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_cover_enrollment	78.4%	percent of enrolled students	share of all enrollment that sits in the districts of the dose	students enrolled in reporting districts	2020-21 school year			enrollment (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_d1	3.1	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	enrollment-weighted mean of district rates (students suspended over students enrolled), bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count in the least deprived tenth of districts by deprivation rank	2020-21 school year	95% CI 2.4 to 4.1	1,025 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_d10	23.6	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	enrollment-weighted mean of district rates (students suspended over students enrolled), bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count in the most deprived tenth of districts by deprivation rank	2020-21 school year	95% CI 20.2 to 27.3	1,022 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_d4	20.1	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	enrollment-weighted mean of district rates (students suspended over students enrolled), bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count in the fourth most deprived tenth of districts by deprivation rank	2020-21 school year	95% CI 17.3 to 23.1	1,025 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_enrollment	38.7 million	students enrolled	sum of enrollment in the districts of the dose	school districts (local education agencies) that reported to the Civil Rights Data Collection in the dose	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_floor	100	students enrolled	minimum enrollment for a district to enter (a rule, not an estimate)	districts in the dose, funnel and map	2020-21 school year			none (inclusion rule)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_fold	7.6	ratio of the suspension rate in the most deprived tenth of districts to the rate in the least deprived tenth	ratio of pooled rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count	2020-21 school year	95% CI 5.5 to 10.6	10,257 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_missing_n	38	school districts	count of districts left out of the dose, funnel and map for want of a count	districts that have a deprivation rank and at least 100 students but report no suspension count	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_missing_students	6.2 million	students enrolled	sum of enrollment in those districts	students in the districts that report no suspension count	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_n	10,257	school districts	count of districts in the dose, funnel and map	districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count	2020-21 school year		10,257 districts	none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_peak	26.9	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	enrollment-weighted mean of district rates (students suspended over students enrolled), bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count in the tenth of districts with the highest mean rate	2020-21 school year	95% CI 24.1 to 29.7	1,026 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_peak_decile	8	decile of the district deprivation rank (1 = least deprived, 10 = most)	decile with the highest enrollment-weighted mean rate	districts in the dose	2020-21 school year			district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_peak_vs_d10	+3.2	students suspended per 1,000 enrolled: the highest tenth's rate minus the most deprived tenth's rate	difference of two enrollment-weighted decile means, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count	2020-21 school year	95% CI −0.9 to 7.1	10,257 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_r	+0.42	correlation coefficient	enrollment-weighted correlation of the district suspension rate with the district deprivation rank, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count	2020-21 school year	95% CI 0.37 to 0.46	10,257 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_r_state	+0.42	correlation coefficient	the same correlation with a bootstrap interval that resamples whole states	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count	2020-21 school year	95% CI 0.31 to 0.51	10,257 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_ratio	2.2	ratio of Black students suspended to the number expected if each district's Black students were suspended at its white rate	observed Black suspensions over expected suspensions at the district's white rate, pooled, bootstrap interval over states	Black students enrolled in the 5156 districts with at least 50 Black and as many white students and a reported suspension count for each group	2020-21 school year	95% CI 2.1 to 2.4	5,156 districts	Black enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_share_unwt	65.4%	percent of districts in which the Black rate is higher than the white rate	share of districts, bootstrap interval over states	districts in the Black-white comparison	2020-21 school year	95% CI 57.5% to 72.4%	5,156 districts	none (each district counts once)	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_share_wt	84.0%	percent of districts in which the Black rate is higher than the white rate	share of districts, weighted by Black enrollment, bootstrap interval over states	districts in the Black-white comparison	2020-21 school year	95% CI 77.1% to 88.8%	5,156 districts	Black enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_slope_fe	1.9	students suspended per 1,000 enrolled, for each ten-point step in the district deprivation rank	enrollment-weighted regression of the district rate on the deprivation rank with state fixed effects, errors clustered by state	students enrolled in school districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported suspension count	2020-21 school year	95% CI 1.3 to 2.6	10,257 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_students_total	651,832	students suspended out of school at least once, counted once for each school	sum of the schools' counts over all districts; a student suspended at two schools counts at each, and school cells coded as suppressed or not reported add nothing	students in the reporting districts	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection	Districts report their own counts. The sum counts a student once for each school where they were suspended.
oss_terc_x	2.6	ratio of the suspension rate in the most deprived third of districts to the rate in the least deprived third	ratio of pooled rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 2.2 to 3.0	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
oss_white_same	13.7	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	mean of district white rates weighted by Black enrollment, bootstrap interval over states	white students, at the white rate of each district weighted by that district's Black enrollment	2020-21 school year	95% CI 10.1 to 17.0	5,156 districts	Black enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
ref_mid_x	1.7	ratio of the referral to law enforcement rate in the middle third of districts to the rate in the least deprived third	ratio of pooled rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 1.3 to 2.0	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
ref_terc_x	1.5	ratio of the referral to law enforcement rate in the most deprived third of districts to the rate in the least deprived third	ratio of pooled rates, bootstrap interval over counties	students enrolled in the 10181 districts that have a deprivation rank, at least 100 students and a reported count for all four stages	2020-21 school year	95% CI 1.2 to 1.9	10,181 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
state_high	43.6	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	pooled students suspended over students enrolled in the state's districts of the dose	students enrolled in the state with the highest rate among the ranked states, in districts of the dose	2020-21 school year		218 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
state_high_cov	93.2%	percent of the state's enrolled students in the districts of the dose	enrollment of the state's districts in the dose over enrollment of all its reporting districts	students enrolled in the state's reporting districts	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
state_low	3.1	students suspended out of school at least once per 1,000 students enrolled	pooled students suspended over students enrolled in the state's districts of the dose	students enrolled in the state with the lowest rate among the ranked states, in districts of the dose	2020-21 school year		225 districts	district enrollment	Civil Rights Data Collection
state_low_cov	96.4%	percent of the state's enrolled students in the districts of the dose	enrollment of the state's districts in the dose over enrollment of all its reporting districts	students enrolled in the state's reporting districts	2020-21 school year			none (full count)	Civil Rights Data Collection
us_inc_black	5.2%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties; all ten tenths pooled	Black children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in all the tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 5.0% to 5.3%	27,690 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas
us_inc_white	1.9%	percent of children incarcerated on April 1, 2010	population-weighted mean over tracts (2010 tract population as the weight), bootstrap interval over counties; all ten tenths pooled	white children raised in low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), in all the tracts that have both estimates and a deprivation rank	children born 1978 to 1983, incarcerated on April 1, 2010	95% CI 1.8% to 2.0%	27,690 tracts	2010 census tract population	Opportunity Atlas

Definitions

Area Deprivation Index (ADI): A score that ranks neighborhoods by income, education, employment and housing conditions drawn from the American Community Survey. In this book a higher national percentile means a more deprived neighborhood.

Methods

This chapter compares out-of-school suspension rates of school districts in the 2020 to 2021 school year across tenths of district deprivation, Black and white students in the same districts, and the share of children from low-income families incarcerated on April 1, 2010, across census tracts. Only districts that the book's geography file assigns a deprivation rank are analyzed, so charter, regional and single-grade-span reporting districts are left out. A student suspended at two schools counts at each, and in-school suspensions are not included. The deprivation index is built from 2019-2023 data, so it describes the tracts as they are now and not as they were when these children grew up in the 1980s and 1990s.

Which districts and school year the discipline data cover

District data are the Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2020 to 2021 school year, school counts summed to the reporting district. School cells coded as suppressed or not reported add nothing to a district's sum.

Only districts that the book's geography file (dim_geo), which assigns each tract to one school district, knows get a rank, and charter, regional and single-grade-span reporting districts do not. A district enters the dose, the funnel and the map with at least 100 students enrolled and a reported suspension count.

The Black-white comparison uses every reporting district with at least 50 Black and as many white students and a reported count for each.

Figures explained here: Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3 and Figure 4

How suspensions, expulsions and referrals are counted

A suspension rate is the number of students who received at least one out-of-school suspension at a school, counting students with and without disabilities and counting a student once per school however many times they were suspended there, divided by the students enrolled, per 1,000; a student suspended at two schools counts at each, and in-school suspensions are not included.

Expulsions are students expelled with or without educational services (zero-tolerance expulsions are a subset of those and are not added; the staged file adds them, so the build reads the two services categories from the raw school file), and referrals to law enforcement and school-related arrests are counts of students at each stage, summed the same way.

Figures explained here: Figure 1 and Figure 2

How districts are ranked, grouped and mapped

A district's deprivation rank is the mean of the Area Deprivation Index national ranks (1 least deprived, 100 most) of the tracts assigned to it, weighted by 2019-2023 tract population.

Tenths and thirds hold equal numbers of districts, and a tenth's value is the enrollment-weighted mean of its district rates, which equals the pooled count of suspended students over pooled enrollment.

The county map assigns each district to the county that holds most of its population, pools suspended students and enrolled students over the districts of a county that report a count, and draws counties whose reporting districts enroll at least 500 students and hold more than 75% of the students in all the districts assigned to the county; state rates are ranked only for states where the districts in the analysis hold at least 75% of the students in all reporting districts.

Figures explained here: Figure 1, Figure 3 and Figure 4

How tract incarceration shares are measured and ranked

Incarceration is the Opportunity Atlas share of children from low-income families (parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution), born 1978 to 1983, who were incarcerated on April 1, 2010, on native 2010 tracts, printed as a percent; genders are pooled and the noise added for privacy is never clipped.

A tract is in a comparison when the estimates exist and its 2010 census population is positive; each tract is weighted by that population.

A 2010 tract's deprivation rank is the land-area-weighted mean rank of the overlapping 2020 tracts that have one, when they cover at least half of its land area; the index is built from 2019-2023 data, so it describes the tracts as they are now and not as they were when these children grew up in the 1980s and 1990s.

Figure explained here: Figure 5

How uncertainty is measured

Intervals for means, ratios and correlations are 95% percentile intervals from 2,000 draws of whole counties with replacement (seed 12345), where a district's county is the one that holds most of its population; the Black-white comparison, which includes districts that cannot be placed in a county, resamples states.

Four rankings of the same places

The comparison follows the book's ranking switch rule, fixed on October 28, 2026 before any of these gradients was computed. The main gradient of the chapter is recomputed under four rankings of the same places, with the outcome, period, weights, bins and intervals unchanged: the published ADI; a standardized index that applies the ADI's coefficients to its measures after standardizing each one across tracts; median household income; and the share of adults 25 and older with a bachelor's degree or more. The three alternatives come from ACS tract estimates for 2019 to 2023, the period of the ADI.

All four rankings use the same places, the 25,827 tracts that have the outcome and all four rankings, so the ADI panel can differ slightly from the chapter's main figure. Tracts enter only if they have every input of the standardized index, which leaves out tracts without a median rent, home value or mortgage cost. Each 2010 tract takes the land-area-weighted mean of each ranking over the common-sample 2020 tracts that overlap it, when they cover at least half of its land area, the chapter's construction of its ADI, and tenths are tenths of the tracts where Black and white children are both estimated, as in the chapter's comparison by race.

A pattern counts as changed when the worse end switches sides, when the two ends differ under one ranking and not the other, or when the rank correlation of bin order and bin mean falls on the other side of 0.9 and moves by at least 0.1.

Figure explained here: Figure 6

What these data cannot show

A suspension rate records what districts reported, not what children did. A higher rate in a deprived district, or for Black students, is consistent with more disruptive conduct, with harsher responses to the same conduct, with both, and with differences in how districts count, and these data cannot tell them apart. The counts are for a pandemic year, are self-reported, and omit the suppressed cells. The 38 districts with no count include some of the largest in the country, and charter, regional and single-grade-span districts have no deprivation rank, so the districts here are not all of the districts. In several states, among them Florida, Maryland and California, the districts in the analysis hold less than 75% of enrolled students, so no state rate is given for them. The Area Deprivation Index understates deprivation in high-cost cities (Chapter 1.1, What the deprivation index measures (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/anatomy-of-deprivation)), and a district's rank averages over tracts that differ a great deal. The map assigns each district to one county although some span several.

References

Kind, Amy J. H.; Buckingham, William R. (2018). Making Neighborhood-Disadvantage Metrics Accessible: The Neighborhood Atlas. New England Journal of Medicine 378(26): 2456-2458. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1802313
Skiba, Russell J.; Michael, Robert S.; Nardo, Abra Carroll; Peterson, Reece L. (2002). The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment. The Urban Review 34(4): 317-342. doi:10.1023/A:1021320817372
U.S. Government Accountability Office (2018). K-12 Education: Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with Disabilities. GAO-18-258. www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-258
Chetty, Raj; Friedman, John N.; Hendren, Nathaniel; Jones, Maggie R.; Porter, Sonya R. (2018). The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility. NBER Working Paper 25147. doi:10.3386/w25147
Chetty, Raj; Hendren, Nathaniel; Jones, Maggie R.; Porter, Sonya R. (2020). Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 135(2): 711-783. doi:10.1093/qje/qjz042
Bacher-Hicks, Andrew; Billings, Stephen B.; Deming, David J. (2024). The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 16(4): 165-193. doi:10.1257/pol.20230052
Aizer, Anna; Doyle, Joseph J., Jr. (2015). Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130(2): 759-803. doi:10.1093/qje/qjv003

Provenance

Pipeline version: 0.1.0
Build script: book2/chapters/school-discipline-and-incarceration/build.py (sha256 7809484bea45139fb76b68c6e604b0053922bdfc25da0b185be8818e4ee9229a)
Built on: 2026-10-07
Site commit: c2b1ff3309cb4a10833f884da91ac0057a66ad0a

Inputs

File	Size (bytes)	SHA-256, first 1 MB	SHA-256, last 1 MB
book2/chapters/school-discipline-and-incarceration/incarceration.py	8,924	161d58ee04846c2d6a444dd1124a4fec9895013f72118d8866f36480a28dc062	161d58ee04846c2d6a444dd1124a4fec9895013f72118d8866f36480a28dc062
book2/chapters/school-discipline-and-incarceration/schools.py	22,041	2c521a43154abc3feea0f3f51e298cc5e98efc3f2b3c073e3e893c983b30950f	2c521a43154abc3feea0f3f51e298cc5e98efc3f2b3c073e3e893c983b30950f
data/analytic/tract_atlas.parquet	39,659,925	29d5e4d943552d54aeb6ba92aadc939d9bd15bdea553c78357dbd516757be627	1e10d1ecf722340f23ee2212d4999a90250f85b65fa89b39e32db06d9472e22e
data/raw/acs/deprivation_components_2019_2023/tract.parquet	13,197,793	5545cde2cbe96a8b56e468d65388248a241aa6bd300d3c9e325d08d3f86b11da	5c8ec454d066988b0f1a01aaa6ed34ebfc05d162e01cf9c6bb01f9198cbaff12
data/raw/crdc/2020_21/2020-21-crdc-data.zip	81,589,466	e5eb2e56fab576ce2300839d0a799e859b8a13604516afd405cb0adce69067c3	ed640cf911051de526693262a2e92ae36d54b2a60eff1346ccc4913b9669b63c
data/staged/adi/adi_atlas_tract2020_2023.parquet	798,078	5e409bc212ff871def780fa27b4cf8b616d9da420b2b9f6455517eddcd8c1a95	5e409bc212ff871def780fa27b4cf8b616d9da420b2b9f6455517eddcd8c1a95
data/staged/crosswalks/ct_tract2020_to_old_county.parquet	15,842	961ef39f31596ef65fca2c67d5f2f63e533c5dc9b49745d3bb6437844e4b831d	961ef39f31596ef65fca2c67d5f2f63e533c5dc9b49745d3bb6437844e4b831d
data/staged/crosswalks/tract_2010_to_2020.parquet	2,602,636	f7526f0d1bac31dbc540f6d733a850c9e0ee4c7622011214c04afedfbfa1e0a5	9e573492f9804b571b9944a53cc59fadab4051a175952b058f77cc5a644a98ff
data/staged/education/crdc_lea_2020_21.parquet	912,989	559ab1d6e67839c6fb99a55d77b8b135d693b2f9ff4eb748b03afd61ceb4490b	559ab1d6e67839c6fb99a55d77b8b135d693b2f9ff4eb748b03afd61ceb4490b
data/staged/food_access/food_access_tract2010_2019.parquet	37,967,838	c36929f1809e9ac84ac5f1cb62140bd980c315287833c6f281839df4c1619c89	05a17b940a79393b0c2ce5c9e9248496c319cba6896b63af3a2df34fe04f63aa
data/staged/mobility/oa_module1_tract2010.parquet	14,946,600	32583830e03567b41ad3c245ca41aa67fb9cb55a8a46e8d9ae4c77a6cc2fcd83	6d67fac56edd8f07346375fb0b97e3c82621d57457d89c7fe93ec6f1b758bfaf
data/staged/ses/acs5_tract2020_2019_2023.parquet	7,232,424	5fe6f730a35225f14d5d8abfc6b9bce58b52e545f309a7eac74f1dae74d7a31c	7b4a2475b3852d3f91804716a04566ef8ceadacec2be9fb85f5eb642078efac6
data/staged/svi/svi_tract2020_2022.parquet	17,740,415	cb3860d8edc2aaf1f2a02211a58f7a0b80457eb6ad9a37b5ec8abb2d5da9da10	e371a4a696d5bed05d54ad7c5b6ca2504508805b847ec415c2322be7f66ec2b2

Outputs

File	SHA-256
facts.json	88a92432b6bedeb487d217f56ccb7d2d909106e9fd65f23139263eec30bcf089
figures/alt_rankings.json	aadc8b9fe818480dbeadcf72b8d936746dcbf813936dd21af727ebb3dde2fb1f
figures/exclusion_funnel.json	6ecfa3e856f8a710109a2dab344170fc399d0de0de3b117fd56adc34f3f82f67
figures/incarceration_gradient.json	0d8a4e6e4eb5ac7f097793036c26d3d7c89093f9a6905319b871d1af4212228d
figures/suspension_black_white.json	120c906afc28cbe244b48c034d45d9b5fbd302365283c4409cb0968df8f35655
figures/suspension_dose.json	0c78be52ad32efc31039370c257c107de7299cff3f99ba99f21a1c4f25e4b655
figures/suspension_map.json	6e76ea59f092baa9541d477186ee048813498476ccbe47e3370ed2ebe4a79b3a
meta.json	622b39e32c6a1b30fc1889dd2c99e25f8369d6cdc6f350ced7cd5037964cb585
public/data/school-discipline-and-incarceration/suspension_dose.json	61ecbb7272027e016cb21b4a534d4cf2efa4b4bc0c452e3d424f06167bf23e34
public/data/school-discipline-and-incarceration/suspension_map.json	e69f0ff17a725e2b4005a971e3f11d0012a2138087b170d4eaea25df190cddf1
refs.json	1713c9c8646927a2263864328f537b14189cd9e1b57bae8d26904dd2fb46b701

Machine formats

Report (Markdown): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/school-discipline-and-incarceration/report.md
Every estimate (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/facts.json
Table 1, figure "suspension_dose" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/suspension_dose.json
Table 2, figure "exclusion_funnel" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/exclusion_funnel.json
Table 3, figure "suspension_black_white" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/suspension_black_white.json
Table 4, figure "suspension_map" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/suspension_map.json
Table 5, figure "incarceration_gradient" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/incarceration_gradient.json
Table 6, figure "alt_rankings" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/school-discipline-and-incarceration/figures/alt_rankings.json
Payload of "suspension_dose" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/data/school-discipline-and-incarceration/suspension_dose.json
Payload of "suspension_map" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/data/school-discipline-and-incarceration/suspension_map.json
Index of every report: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/llms.txt; all reports in one file: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/llms-full.txt