Too many girls of color are being pushed out of school as a result of unfair discipline practices that remove students from the classroom, school policing, and lack of investment in care and trauma-informed approaches. Students need their schools to respond to trauma with care and not punishment. Now more than ever, schools must be given the resources to be safe places for girls and all students to heal and thrive.

The Ending Punitive, Unfair, School-based Harm that is Overt and Unresponsive to Trauma (PUSHOUT) Act of 2021 is one way the federal government can invest in resources that foster safe, supportive, and inclusive schools for girls of color.

The Ending PUSHOUT Act would take on urgent national problems by:

  • addressing the lack of federal investment and supports for schools that want to reform discipline policies;
  • increasing data transparency regarding schools’ use of exclusionary discipline; and
  • bringing new attention to addressing the criminalization and pushout of Black and brown girls, who are suspended, expelled, and arrested at alarmingly high rates.

To learn more about the Ending PUSHOUT Act, watch the virtual congressional briefing the National Women’s Law Center hosted in partnership with Girls, Inc.

On October 21, 2021, the National Women’s Law Center hosted a virtual briefing on the Ending PUSHOUT Act (H.R.2248), in partnership with Girls, Inc.

Opening remarks were given by Dr. Janice Johnson Dias, President of GrassROOTS Community Foundation, followed by recorded remarks from Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. The panelists for the briefing included student participants of Girls Inc. of Long Island; Fatima Goss Graves, President & CEO of the National Women’s Law Center; Rebecca Epstein, Executive Director of the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty & Inequality; and Dr. Venus Evans-Winters, research and policy scholar and psychotherapist. Please note that at 00:32:59, the briefing video has been edited to include a re-recorded video of a panelist response that was not captured in the original recording because of technical difficulties with audio.