Illinois Fact Sheet

Image for National Week of Action on School Pushout

On the occasion of the National Week of Action on School Pushout (October 11 to 17 2010), the Dignity in Schools Campaign created a helpful local Illinois Fact Sheet.  Here is the Illinois Fact Sheet in Spanish.

Dignity in Schools created an updated Illinois Fact Sheet for the 2011 Week of Action on School Pushout (Oct 1-8 2011).

Maintaining a safe and healthy instructional climate is a critical responsibility of schools in the 21st century. Student behavior and academic achievement are inseparable, and safer schools are higher achieving schools. Unfortunately, many schools use only one set of tools—suspension, expulsion, and arrest—to maintain discipline and safety.  Rather than contribute to a better learning environment, the overuse of these exclusionary practices has been shown to predict dropout and contribute to an unhealthy school atmosphere affecting students and teachers alike.

Spotlight on Chicago Public Schools
  • Education Week identifies Chicago as one of 25 “drop out epicenters” in the U.S.  It projects that 16,731 Chicago students who entered ninth grade in 2007 will not graduate from high school after four years.[i]
  • Under the direction of then Chief Executive Officer and current U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the number of out-of-school suspensions in Chicago Public School district nearly quadrupled, from 23,942 to 93,312 in the six years, between 2002 and 2008.[ii] Even more dramatic was the increase in longer suspensions (4 to 10 days) from 5,468 to 25,140.[iii]
  • In 2008, Black students in Chicago were more than 3.5 times as likely to be suspended as White students.[iv]
[i] Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (2010).

[ii] Illinois State Board of Education (n.d.).

[iii] Id.

[iv] Id; Illinois State Board Of Education, Fall Housing Reports (2008). [Data File]. Retrieved September 20, 2009, from http://www.isbe.net/research/htmls/fall_housing.htm.

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