Denver Disparities
(Jan. 20, 2014; rev. Jan. 12, 2019)
Prefatory note added June 4, 2014 and revised January 12, 2019): This page is similar to the following subpages of the Discipline Disparities page on this site, which discuss like situations where (in the jurisdictions indicated in the titles of the subpages) general reductions in discipline rates were in fact accompanied by increased relative racial/ethnic differences in discipline rates: California Disparities, Colorado Disparities, Connecticut Disparities, Florida Disparities, Maryland Disparities, Massachusetts Disparities, Minnesota Disparities, Oregon Disparities, Rhode Island Disparities, Utah Disparities, Allegheny County (PA) Disparities, Aurora (CO) Disparities, Beaverton (OR) Disparities, Denver Disparities, Henrico County (VA) Disparities, Kern County (CA) Disparities, Los Angeles SWPBS, Loudoun County (VA) Disparities, Milwaukee Disparities, Minneapolis Disparities, Montgomery County (MD) Disparities, Oakland (CA) DisparitiePortland (OR) Disparities, St. Paul Disparities, South Bend Disparities, Urbana (IL) Disparities. Some of the subpages may provide substantial detail, while others simply present statements describing the situations. See also my “Discipline disparities in Md. Schools,” Daily Record (June 21, 2018), which discusses a study showing that generally reductions in suspension in Maryland schools between the 2008-09 and 2013-14 school years had been accompanied by an increase in the ratio of the statewide black suspension rate to the statewide white suspension rate, and that, during that period, 20 of the 23 Maryland school districts for which data on black and overall suspension rate reductions could be analyzed there occurred an increase in the ratio of the black suspension rate to suspension rate for other students.
Other useful related readings regarding the pervasive misunderstanding of this issue include my December 8, 2017 testimony explaining the issue to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, my letters explaining the issue to the United States Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice (July 17, 2017), Comptroller General of the United States (Apr. 12, 2018), Minnesota Department of Human Rights (May 14, 2018), and Maryland State Department of Education (June 26, 2018), as well as my “Misunderstanding of Statistics Leads to Misguided Law Enforcement Policies,” Amstat News (Dec. 2012), “The Paradox of Lowering Standards,” Baltimore Sun (Aug. 5, 2013), “Innumeracy at the Department of Education and the Congressional Committees Overseeing It,” Federalist Society Blog (Aug. 24, 2017), “The Pernicious Misunderstanding of Effects or Policies on Racial Differences in Criminal Justice Outcomes,” Federalist Society Blog (Oct. 12, 2017).
Subsequent to the initial creation of this page, Padres y Jovenes Unidos issued its “3rd Annual Community Accountability Report Card: Toward Ending the School-to-Jail Track in Denver Public Schools 2012-2013.” The report shows that, as the number of suspensions was further reduced in the 2012-13 school year, the ratio of the black suspension rates to the white suspension rates increased from 5.5 to 6.1. The Hispanic-white ratio was unchanged from the prior year. The original version of prefatory note states that page will eventually be amended to further discuss the recent report. But I am not sure that I will get around to doing that.
A Spring 2017 article in Future of Children titled “Social and Emotional Learning and Equity in School Discipline” discusses the effects of programs that generally reduce discipline rates on measures of racial disparity. Because the authors apparently did not understand that it is possible for relative and absolute differences to change in opposite directions – much less that, in the school discipline context, this tends to occur systematically – they make a number of statements suggesting or stating that reductions in discipline rates reduced relative racial differences in discipline rates (although not by very much). One of these statements is discussed on the Oakland (CA) Disparities page.
With respect to Denver the article states (at 125):
“From 2006 to 2013 in Denver, the district’s overall suspension rate dropped by half, from 10.58 percent to 5.63 percent. In Cleveland, suspensions dropped by 60 percent over three years.
“Denver saw a slight narrowing of racial suspension gaps: from 2006 to 2013, suspension rates for black students fell by 7.2 percentage points—the largest reduction among the district’s racial groups in absolute terms. Still, in 2013 the suspension rate for black students, at 10.42 percent, remained almost five times higher than that for white students, at 2.28 percent.35”
Readers would assume that the ratio of the black suspension rate to the white suspension had declined, while still remaining high. In fact, however, as shown in Table 10.1 (at 6) of the article’s reference 35, over the period discussed the ratio increased from 3.0 (17.61/5.88) to 4.6 (10.42/2.28). (Had the article discussed the percentage decline, it would have been 41% for blacks and 61% for whites.)
In addition to the situations in Oakland and Denver, situations where observers mistakenly regarded an larger absolute reduction for blacks than whites as indicating a reduction in the relative difference are discussed on Allegheny County (PA) Disparities and Massachusetts Disparities pages
The following matters warrant mention with regard to Colorado, however. Pages 3-4 of aforementioned letter to Maryland State Department of Education discuss DOE data showing that nationally and in all but 5 states that black-white ratio of multiple suspension rates is greater than the black-white ratio of rates of one or more suspensions as an illustration of the way that eliminating what would otherwise be first suspensions would tend to increase the black-white ratio of rates of one or more suspensions. But Colorado, where the black-white ratio is 3.6 for one or more suspension and 3.1 for multiple suspensions is one of the states where the pattern does not hold. I am uncertain of the reasons for this and it would be useful to know the pattern in Denver itself.