🚨ED today issued guidance on school discipline and disparate impact🚨 Dear Colleague letter says schools can and should discipline students according to BEHAVIOR not AGGREGATE RACIAL STATISTICS. Discipline has a place—maintaining safety—and the fed govt shouldn’t pressure schools to racially balance discipline rates; because favoring or disfavoring based on race is discrimination. VERY welcome common sense! ED's points: 1. Schools must maintain safety and order AND not treat students differently based on race. 2. Title VI prohibits intentional discrimination, not disparate outcomes by themselves. 3. Past administrations imposed disparate-impact liability, assuming racial discrimination even if discipline policies were race-neutral and even-handed. 4. Threat of federal investigation motivated districts to suppress suspension rates, which undermined discipline and safety: misbehavior continued but was left unaddressed. 5. Following July 2026 regulatory change, OCR will NOT challenge otherwise neutral discipline policies that produce different racial outcomes. 6. Schools have broad authority to design and enforce discipline policies and can use mandatory consequences and teacher discretion. 7. Schools can use “subjective” offenses (e.g., classroom disruption, disrespect, ...) if policies are facially neutral, applied evenhandedly, and don't have discriminatory intent 8. Districts that change discipline policies or individual consequences *for the purpose of reducing racial disparities* may be regarded by OCR as intentionally discriminating based on race. 9. Districts should not: establish racial discipline targets or quotas, reduce a punishment because of the student’s race, change discipline rules because of disparate outcomes, or try to make discipline rates proportionate to enrollment. Few other notes: - Statistics can still be circumstantial evidence for intentional discrimination claims. A district can still violate Title IV if it punishes otherwise similar students based on race. - The letter covers Title VI, 5th and 14th equal protection requirements, and race/color/origin discrimination. It does not reference nor change districts obligations under IDEA, 504, or ADA. - Title VI pressure is removed but the DCL does not preempt state discipline laws. Since some state laws require race-based discipline decisions, those states could plausibly face challenge under this reading? E.g., WA and IL require reviews of outcomes disaggregated by race on a regular cadence and have aspects meant to address disparities - ED can separately support productive, clear and consistently enforced discipline by continuing to review and restrict funding to DEI via the massive school "wellness" bureaucracy of mental health, SEL, restorative justice, trauma-informed practices, and related frameworks (MTSS, etc). These are often racial-justice oriented, reward misbehavior, and undermine authority. GREAT that ED is putting this decade-plus-long disparate impact saga to bed the best it can. More why this matters in @CityJournal city-journal.org/article/tru…