Illinois State Board of education | Vice Chair of the Board Dr. Donna S. Leak (2023)
Illinois State Board of education | Vice Chair of the Board Dr. Donna S. Leak (2023)
During the same period, Quincy Junior High School's 1,027 white students, who make up 76.5% of the school population, received 649 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per two white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.
Multiracial students at Quincy Junior High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 213 suspensions for 135 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly 1.6 suspensions per student.
In contrast, Asian students, who make up 1% of the student body at Quincy Junior High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per seven Asian students, totaling two suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.
Of the 1,167 total suspensions at Quincy Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, 696 were in-school suspensions and 471 out-of-school suspensions.
According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 265 student suspensions at Quincy Junior High School were for violence-related offenses and two for those including drugs.
The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 265 cases - 22.7% of the total infractions.
During the 2021-22 school year, Quincy Junior High School reported 278 students - equivalent to 20.7% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 498 students, or 37.1% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.
Black students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 34.5% of all students who were chronically truant, and 46.5% of the chronically absent.
In a broader context, data from the ProPublica database indicates that Black students are suspended at a rate 4.6 times higher than white students in Illinois—surpassing the already high national average rate of 3.9 times.
However, districts’ officials deny a direct link between these statistics and race. Lisa Small, the Superintendent of District 211, argues that these numbers oversimplify the situation. “Decisions are highly individualized and based on the specific behavior and are not well-suited to a simple numerical analysis,” she wrote in a statement. “They are not a statistic to us, but a developing young adult.”
Illinois ranks 12th in the nation for the highest rate of suspensions among Black students relative to their white peers.
| Race | Number of Students | Total Infractions | Infractions Per Student |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hispanic | 48 | 42 | 0.88 |
| Black | 111 | 247 | 2.23 |
| Asian | 14 | 2 | 0.14 |
| Multiracial | 135 | 213 | 1.58 |
| White | 1,027 | 649 | 0.63 |
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