Dupage Policy Journal

Black students, constituting 13.7% or 403 of Metea Valley High School's total student population of 2,935, accounted for 618 out of the 1,128 total suspensions (54.8%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.5 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Metea Valley High School's 984 Asian students, who make up 33.5% of the school population, received 36 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 27 Asian students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 1,128 total suspensions at Metea Valley High School in the 2021-22 school year, 941 were in-school suspensions and 187 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 148 student suspensions at Metea Valley High School were for violence-related offenses and 46 for those including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Metea Valley High School reported 138 students - equivalent to 4.7% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 584 students, or 19.9% 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 15.9% of all students who were chronically truant, and 35.3% 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	397	188	0.47
Black	403	618	1.53
Asian	984	36	0.04
Multiracial	164	105	0.64
White	978	181	0.19