Like many racial and ethnic minority groups, LGBT and gender-nonconforming students often face unfair discipline at school, a group of civil rights and student organizations say.
And LGBT students of color often deal with multiple layers of bias in the classroom, which leads many to feel they are the target of "increased surveillance and policing at school," the groups said.
The organizations—the Gay-Straight Alliance Network and Crossroads Collaborative, a research organization led by University of Arizona faculty—released a set of research briefs combining findings from previous work with the results of youth surveys and issues raised in focus groups about school discipline.
"The briefs find that LGBTQ youth of color and gender-nonconforming youth are frequently blamed for their own victimization and targeted for harsh and biased school discipline. Additionally, LGBTQ students of color report increased surveillance and policing," the Gay-Straight Alliance Network said in a release. "As the report notes, this is consistent with previous research 'illustrating race-based bias and criminalization of youth of color, but it is important to note that these students are also targeted due to sexual orientation and gender identity, expression, or presentation.'"
Among the issues discussed in the briefs:
So what now?
The Advancement Project and the GSA Network released a set of policy recommendations to accompany the issue briefs. Those recommendations echo policy changes that have become the focus of broader efforts to change school discipline. They include:
What do you think?
Researchers have long suspected that LGBT and gender-nonconforming youth have been unfairly affected by school discipline, but efforts to confirm that suspicion have been hindered by limited sources of reliable data. We don't have an office for civil rights report that shows disparate discipline rates for these students like we have for black students, for example.
Do these issues match what you've seen in your school? Are teachers in your area trained to recognize innate biases of all kinds?