Last year, California school districts expelled roughly 21,000 students and handed out 700,000 suspensions. That comes out to about three expulsions and 114 suspensions per 1,000 students - a rate that has fallen slightly over the last few years.
School districts take vastly different approaches to suspensions, expulsions and discipline. Elk Grove Unified officials, for instance, expel students almost 10 times as often as their counterparts at Sacramento City Unified, even though few would argue that Elk Grove's schools are rowdier than Sacramento's.
This database allows you to see how your local school is handling discipline problems. It shows all expulsions and suspensions, along with expulsion and suspension rates, at California public schools during the last school year.
Notes: Schools with the highest discipline rates are often "community day" or "alternative" schools for students with behavioral problems. A school with a high number of expulsions or suspensions might not be any safer or more dangerous than one with few -- the difference could partially be a reflection of policy, not misbehavior.
Updated, Nov. 8; 4:30 p.m: The introductory text -- but not the data itself -- in an earlier version of this database only reflected suspensions and expulsions related to violence. It now reflects all suspensions and expulsions.
Source: California Department of Education
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