Black students in Bucks County school districts are on average 2.6 times as likely as their White classmates to be suspended in or out of school, according to recently released civil rights data from the U.S. Department of Education.
The latest Civil Rights Data Collection, released after an over nine-month delay, is based on survey results from the 2023-24 school year and is the first report since the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to temporarily halt in-school instruction in 2020.
Among the categories in the report, detailing school climate, pupil retention and enrollment in AP courses, the CRDC explores K-12 student discipline.
Black students at Pennsbury School District and Pennridge School District face the largest gap in discipline compared to White Students, about 4 times as likely in both districts.
In Lower Bucks County, Bensalem Township School District, Bristol Borough District and Bristol Township School District discipline Black students at the highest rate, with over 20% of the Black population in each district receiving one or more suspensions.
[This interactive chart explores the racial disparity in discipline that exists between Black and White students in school districts across Bucks County. Areas of the map that are left blank either did not have a significant Black student population — New Hope-Solebury School District and Palisades School District — or, in the case of Morrisville Borough School District, did not have discipline data available in the CRDC.]
In some districts with significant Latino populations — Quakertown and Centennial — these students were 1.5 times as likely as White students to be suspended.
Overall, across all districts, Asian students did not face disproportionate discipline.
How Bucks County compares
Bucks County falls slightly below Pennsylvania’s racial discipline disparities. In the Keystone State, Black students are 2.9 times as likely as White students to receive one or more suspensions.
In neighboring areas, like Montgomery County, similar-sized districts in Bucks County fall below their peers’ disparities. In North Penn School District, Black students are 3.9 times as likely to be disciplined, compared to 2.7 times as likely in Central Bucks School District.
However, not all schools in Bucks County perform as well as comparative districts in this regard.
Black students at Pennsbury are 4.2 times as likely to face suspension. East Penn School District in Lehigh County, similar in both size and demographics to Pennsbury, holds a slightly lower racial disparity rate of 3.8.
Advocates address the gap
While federal data illustrates a discipline gap in Bucks County schools, some advocates aim to give an explanation to the disparity.
Barbara Simmons, executive director of The Peace Center in Langhorne, said that in order to confront the discipline gap that exists in Bucks County schools, people need to first recognize the biases that are apparent in the districts.
Bucks County teaching staffs are some of the least diverse compared to neighboring counties, with only 4% of educators being non-white.
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With a lack of diversity, Simmons said that teachers with implicit biases can impact students from a young age.
“Teachers with those biases — and they often don’t realize they have them — will end up treating little tiny kids of color differently than the white kids,” Simmons said.
With her work at The Peace Center, including holding listening sessions with students and administrators when alleged cases of racial bias have cropped up, Simmons has focused on explaining how these biases can affect the school community as a whole.
“I try to work with teachers to get them to see what it is that they’re doing and how they could intervene,” Simmons said. “And once they learn how to do that, there’s more of an increased chance that they’ll be an ally rather than having them sent down to the principal for suspension.”
