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The challenge: As early as pre-school, and continuing through high school, Black students are punished more than their white counterparts.
According to the American Academy of Pediatricians, exclusionary punishments— suspensions, expulsions, and the like—are developmentally inappropriate for toddlers and can be incredibly harmful to students at any age. Despite this, Black students continue to experience punishment at a disproportionate rate, even in situations where their behavior is identical to White peers.
UC Berkeley’s Sean Darling-Hammond, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health, looked at federal data and found that such discrimination starts young. His 2024 work with Eric Ho—then a statistician in the U.S. Department of Education—found that across virtually every subpopulation and punishment type, Black students experience more punishment than peers of other backgrounds. And this trend emerged early: Despite representing only 17% of preschool enrollment from 2020 to 2021, Black toddlers received nearly one-third of all preschool suspensions and one-quarter of all preschool expulsions.
Relative to white students, Black students were 3.6 times more likely to have been suspended out of school, 3.4 times more likely to have been expelled, 2.4 times more likely to have been referred to law enforcement, and 2.9 times more likely to have experienced a school-based arrest. These inequities held up in diverse economic settings, with Black students in wealthier schools facing some of the most disparate experiences.
There is no evidence that Black students misbehave at higher rates than other students—and yet they are more likely to be disciplined for subjective infractions, such as loitering, creating excessive noise, and being disrespectful and threatening.
The response: Adopting strategies to enhance mental health and wellbeing for all children.
Darling-Hammond believes that most educators want to do the right thing. They want to promote scholastic, mental health and health equity among their students. They want to end common—but troubling— exclusionary practices that especially harm black children. The question is: What works?
In his lab, Thriving and Health Equity through Social Inclusion in Schools (THESIS), Darling-Hammond is seeking the answers. The lab conducts research into how K-12 school practices impact students’ sense of belonging, mental health, and wellbeing—and whether implementing specific strategies can enhance mental health and health equity.
Much of Darling-Hammond’s work analyzes the use of restorative practices, that is, educational approaches designed to build a strong sense of community in schools, and to proactively meet students’ needs—including those that result from trauma in or outside of school.
While sometimes criticized as letting students off easy, restorative practices are designed to guide educators to build communal bonds through steady rituals. Chief among them are sessions called community-building circles, in which student and teacher participants gather to discuss what circle members need to feel safe and respected. Other important restorative practices guide students who have made mistakes to repair any harm they have caused—to hearts or to property—via things like letters of apology, statements of contrition, or physical repair efforts. Rather than punitive, exclusionary discipline such as suspensions and expulsions, restorative practices preempt and address behavioral problems by developing communication and conflict resolution strategies, repairing harm, and helping students make amends.
In 2023, Darling-Hammond examined the use of restorative practices in 485 California middle schools to measure their impact on school and student outcomes. Using six years of data, he found that exposure to restorative practices corresponds to better student academic achievement, lower suspension rates, and smaller racial disparities in learning and discipline.
Schools that increased use of restorative practices saw decreases in schoolwide misbehavior, substance use, and student mental health challenges, as well as improvements in school climate and student achievement. Students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds benefited from restorative practice exposure, with Black and Latino/a students benefiting the most, Darling-Hammond wrote.
Currently, Darling-Hammond’s lab is working to identify not just whether certain programs can move the needle, but how to implement them so they realize their intended benefits. In a series of studies, his team has found positively deviant schools and districts—places where students are flourishing and disparities are nearly nonexistent. His work seeks to demystify their magic.
“We’ve identified bright spots where we see really, really low racial disparities in academic achievement and discipline. And in these schools, we’re finding that educators believe that one of their core missions is to ensure every single child feels seen, loved, included, and connected to,” Darling-Hammond said.
“What I’m observing now, in the more recent administrative regime, is that the structural supports that encouraged more bright spots to emerge are fading away. So what we are hoping to do with our research is to create more momentum for bright spots to emerge, but also clarity about the pathway [for schools to become] the kinds of places that ensure that every child, regardless of their background, feels really seen, loved, affirmed, and supported–and can succeed.”
To Darling-Hammond, frontline educators are drowning in complexity, asked to consider hundreds and hundreds of programs while struggling to put out fires every day.
“We need to stay focused on what works, and not get distracted by the many, many, many things that educators will be pulled to try by parents and policymakers,” he said.
Dr. Yee Wan, Director of State and Regional Projects Department at the Santa Clara County Office of Education, who brought in Darling-Hammond as a partner in a regional effort to reduce suspensions among Black students, has found his restorative approach to be transformative.
“We are really grateful for the partnership, and his expertise,” Wan said. “His efforts have contributed to improved academic outcomes and a more positive school climate.”