Helped Pass Legislation Ending Zero-Tolerance School Discipline

Starting in 2016, we represented kids in expulsion hearings and pushed for restorative practices in school discipline. We supported the ACLU and the Student Advocacy Center's push to pass Rethink Discipline legislation (HB 5619, part of the HB 5618–5621 / HB 5693–5695 package enacted as Public Acts 360–366 of 2016), then sent a letter to educators explaining the change.

Comparing the pre-reform period (2013–2017) to the post-reform period (2017–2025, excluding the 2020–2021 pandemic outlier) shows a 20.8% reduction in the pooled student expulsion rate — roughly 2,137 fewer students expelled than expected (8,151 actual vs. 10,288 expected), or about 305 fewer expulsions per year. The primary driver was the law's mandatory 7-factor discretion test (MCL 380.1310c), which requires schools to weigh individual circumstances before expelling a student rather than applying an automatic penalty.

The reforms also produced a slight shift toward in-school discipline: before the law, schools issued 3.27 out-of-school suspensions for every 1 in-school suspension; afterward, that ratio softened to 2.99 to 1 — about 22,320 incidents shifted from out-of-school to in-school suspension over the post-reform period, or roughly 3,190 incidents kept in-school per year, driven by the restorative practice mandate and reduced use of zero-tolerance discipline.