Lost Instruction Time in California Schools

The Disparate Harm from Post-Pandemic Punitive Suspensions

UPDATE: This report was updated in January 2024. You can read the update here.

The two groups of children with the most unstable home environments - foster youth and those experiencing homelessness -  are the two groups that educators are most likely to send home by meting out punitive "out-of-school" suspension, according to new research published by the UCLA Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles and the National Center for Youth Law.

The new research report, “Lost Instruction Time in California Schools: The Disparate Harm from Post-Pandemic Punitive Suspensions,” analyzes CDE data sources to provide a detailed review of how suspensions directly contribute to disparities in learning opportunities for students in foster care or experiencing homelessness, as well as along the lines of race and disability in every California school district. The report is the first to highlight how post-COVID suspensions in 2021–2022 added to the pandemic’s harmful impact of instructional loss, especially for students from “high-needs” groups most harmed by the pandemic.

This report provides a detailed review of how suspensions directly contribute to disparities in learning opportunities for students in these two groups, and along the lines of race and disability in every California school district.