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U.S. Supreme Court · 1975
419 U.S. 565 (1975)
Held that a student's state-law entitlement to a public education is "a property interest ... protected by the Due Process Clause" that may not be taken for misconduct "absent fundamentally fair procedures." For a suspension of ten days or less, due process requires "oral or written notice of the charges ... and, if [the student] denies them, an explanation of the evidence the authorities have and an opportunity to present his side of the story." Notice and hearing should generally precede removal, except where the student's presence poses a continuing danger or ongoing threat of disruption.
Some later courts have distinguished or questioned it — read before relying.
Treatment last confirmed July 18, 2026. Case-wide subsequent treatment; human-set. Not specific to any one passage.
Stationing police (school resource officers) in schools reliably increases exclusionary discipline, police referrals, and student arrests — with the largest increases falling on Black students and students with disabilities — and in the strongest designs is linked to lower graduation and college enrollment; safety effects are mixed, with some serious violence reduced but gun-related incidents not prevented.
Out-of-school suspension and other exclusionary discipline are associated with — and in several quasi-experimental studies appear to worsen — suspended students' attendance, achievement, and graduation and their risk of dropout and justice-system involvement; the practice is applied with large racial and disability disparities, but rigorous causal estimates of its effect on test scores are mixed.
Physical restraint and seclusion in schools are disproportionately used on students with disabilities, carry documented risks of physical and psychological harm, and lack evidence that they improve behavior or serve any therapeutic or educational purpose; the science supports their use only as emergency last resorts to prevent imminent serious harm, not as behavior-management tools.