U.S. public schools suspend black, Hispanic and disabled students at much higher rates than others, according to a new report by a Colorado-based civil rights group

The federal government found that between the 1972-73 and the 2006-07 school years, suspension rates for white students rose from 3% to 5%. Meanwhile, suspension rates for black students rose from 6% to 15% and suspension rates for Hispanic students rose from 3% to 7%. Recent federal findings also show that minority students with disabilities are suspended at a much higher rate than white students. In the 2007-08 school year, 16.6% of black disabled students were suspended, vs. 6.7% of white disabled students. It would be interesting to see what suspension rates were for Asian students but unfortunately that information was apparently not contained in the report.