School rules must be reformed to protect Black girls

At the start of each school year, districts across Pennsylvania, including the School District of Philadelphia, distribute their updated school rules — often called the “code of conduct” or “student and family handbook.”

These important documents set forth school rules that are often subjective, vague, and a main driver of racially discriminatory practices. These rules play a large part in determining whether Black girls, who face a unique set of challenges in public schools, can learn in supportive education spaces with fair rules.

Schools have a clear legal duty to uphold every student’s right to learn free from discrimination or harassment, including on the basis of race, sex, and disability. But Black girls are especially harmed by subjective rules and their selective, discriminatory enforcement, despite these legal protections and even when their behaviors are comparable to their peers.

Our 2023 report revealed that anti-Black racism pervades all facets of students’ education. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania has some of the country’s most inequitable conditions: Black and brown children are concentrated in grossly underfunded schools. Many students attend schools where there are no teachers of color or any mental health counselors. These harmful school conditions undermine a child’s ability to learn and thrive.

Both school rules and how they are enforced set Black and brown students up to be punished. School dress and grooming codes particularly harm Black girls and fuel adultification bias (treating Black girls as adults instead of children). Black girls who wear protective hairstyles (such as braids, locs, knots, afros, or twists) or express themselves by wearing specific styles (such as hoop earrings, bonnets, and headscarves) are routinely subjected to school rules prohibiting these forms of expression.

Racist and sexist rules like these push out Black girls, who are suspended at rates seven times higher than white girls, according to federal data.

Due to systemic racism and disinvestment, Black girls are more likely to attend schools where police are an everyday fixture and misused as disciplinarians, enforcing racist and sexist rules — arresting students in the process.

Pennsylvania schools have among the highest rates of student arrest in the nation: Black girls are detained at rates five times higher than white girls, despite equivalent behavior, and deal with the often lifelong collateral damage that comes from entering the juvenile or adult legal system.

Amaiyah Monet Parker, a Pennsylvania public school graduate who now attends college, shared her expertise about how rules shaped her experience. “Black girls’ bodies are constantly policed, and they are often criminalized. They don’t even have the security to unapologetically be themselves without the fear of judgment. If Black girls can’t be children in schools, where can they be children?”

Toxic school cultures hold Black girls back and hurt their mental health and overall well-being. But we have the power to transform our schools and communities.

One example is the CROWN Act (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair), HB 1394, which passed the Pennsylvania House in 2023 and is now before the Senate. We urge its passage. It is time for Pennsylvania to join the growing majority of states that have explicitly banned racial hair discrimination.

In the meantime, students in public schools should know that the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, the entity charged with enforcing our state antidiscrimination law, has adopted regulations that protect against racial discrimination on the basis of hair texture and protective hairstyle.

Schools must follow the law by reviewing their code of conduct policies to eliminate hair discrimination and other discriminatory and subjective school rules, and by providing frequent and transparent opportunities for students and families to provide input through surveys, feedback sessions offered by schools, and testimony at school board meetings.

Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education — successfully challenging racial discrimination in public schools — we must exercise our collective voice and responsibility to demand that schools provide safe, supportive education spaces where Black girls can flourish without fear of discrimination or marginalization.

Black girls must be protected, affirmed, and celebrated in our schools. This is how they will thrive.

Paige Joki is a staff attorney at Education Law Center — Pennsylvania and leads ELC’s Black Girls Education Justice Initiative. Tran T. Doan is a public voices fellow of the OpEd Project and AcademyHealth and an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health.