Black girls are too often treated as problems to control rather than children to teach, protect, and support.

The school pushout framework described by scholars, educators, and advocates including Monique W. Morris and Venus Evans-Winters examines how Black girls can be pushed away from education through exclusionary discipline, criminalization, institutional bias, school policing, and policies that fail to understand their lived experiences.

This is not simply a question of whether Black girls receive discipline. It is also a question of how Black girlhood itself is interpreted. Black girls may be perceived as older, less innocent, more independent, more defiant, or less deserving of protection than their peers. Subjective behaviors such as disrespect, disruption, attitude, defiance, or dress can therefore carry consequences that reach far beyond the conduct itself.

The result can be lost classroom time, suspension, expulsion, disengagement from school, contact with law enforcement, and a broader message that Black girls are unwelcome in educational environments that should be helping them develop.

Black girls should not have to become less visible, less expressive, or less themselves in order to remain safely connected to school.

This Action begins by making school pushout visible and encouraging members to examine what is happening in the districts, schools, and communities around them.