AUSTIN — Nearly 60 percent of public junior high school and high school students get suspended or expelled, according to a report released today that tracked about 1 million Texas children over six years.

More than 30 percent of the Texas seventh- through 12th-grade students received out-of-school suspension, which averaged two days.

About 15 percent were suspended or expelled at least 11 times, and nearly half of those ended up in the juvenile justice system. Most students who experienced multiple suspensions or expulsions do not graduate, according to the study by the Council of State Governments Justice Center and the Public Policy Research Institute of Texas A&M University.

“The findings in this report should prompt policymakers in Texas and in states everywhere to ask this question: Is our (public) school discipline system getting the desired results?” said one of the report's co-authors, Michael Thompson of the justice center.

The findings suggest an urgent need to stop the criminalization of students for simply misbehaving, said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, longtime chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, and Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson.

The study is considered groundbreaking because it relies on the actual tracking of students instead of a sample.

The study found:

For the nearly 60 percent formally disciplined, the actions ranged from in-school suspension for as little as one class period to being expelled.

Three percent of the disciplinary actions resulted from conduct for which the state requires removal from class — such as aggravated assault or using a firearm on school property — while 97 percent were at the discretion of the school district for school conduct code violations.

Special-education students, particularly those categorized as emotionally disturbed, were more likely to be disciplined.

83 percent of African American male students had at least one discretionary violation, compared with 74 percent of Hispanic male students and 59 percent of Anglo male students.

The same pattern applies for female students — 70 percent for African Americans, compared with 58 percent for Hispanics and 37 percent for Anglos.

“We see so many kids being removed from the classrooms for disciplinary reasons, often repeatedly, demonstrating that we're not getting the desired changes in behavior,” Thompson said. “When we remove kids from the classroom, we see an increased likelihood in that student repeating a grade, dropping out or not graduating. We also see an increased likelihood of juvenile justice involvement.”

Whitmire complained of “large inner-city school districts creating a large bureaucracy to deal with often-times just dumb teenage behavior that can be corrected short of making it a crime.”

The report confirms his concern about criminalizing classroom behavior.

“The nonsense begins with overusing the issuance of Class C misdemeanor tickets and the tremendous growth of school district police departments,” he said.

Suzanne Marchman, spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, said the agency had not yet evaluated the study but that the finding that six in 10 students were disciplined did not seem outrageous, given the large variation between districts in enforcing local conduct codes.

Marchman added that the agency is concerned that the study creates an impression that students might be committing serious crimes, while most are disciplined for discretionary infractions as minor as a wild hairdo.

“It looks like the majority of Texas students are wayward students and just because a student is tardy to class or wears a tank top ... doesn't mean they're going to be bad kids.”

Curtis Clay, deputy director of the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University, had not seen the study but said the percentage of students disciplined seemed much higher than he expected.

Brian Woods, Northside Independent School District's deputy superintendent, who also had not seen the study, said he doubted that 60 percent of Northside's secondary students are formally disciplined, as the study's findings would indicate.

“I don't think that 30 percent of the student population would have been sent home, even for one day, out of an entire high school career,” he said.

Woods also questioned whether school disciplinary action pushes students into the juvenile justice system.

“Showing a causal relationship there would be quite challenging,” Woods said. “The way that a school or school district handles discipline is, to a degree, a reflection of the community it resides in.”

Jefferson, the chief justice, told state lawmakers during his state of the judiciary speech in February: “Sending juveniles away to remote detention centers is sometimes necessary, but it is not the answer to our societal problem.”

Texas youngsters need more rehabilitative services, psychiatric care and vocational education, he said, noting that more than 80 percent of prison inmates are school dropouts.

“Charging kids with criminal offenses for low-level behavioral issues exacerbates the problem,” he told the lawmakers.

Schools with similar student demographics varied greatly in how frequently they suspended or expelled students.

Northside's 2009-2010 disciplinary data collected by the TEA show that African American students, special-education students and at-risk students are disciplined at higher rates. Woods said the district monitors discipline rates at campuses each semester and addresses trends with those administrators.

In the San Antonio Independent School District, special-education students were most disproportionately disciplined — 16 percent received in-school suspension versus about 10 percent for the total student body.

District spokeswoman Leslie Price could not point to a reason.

The report will set the stage for extensive policy discussions in Texas and the nation, Jefferson said Monday.

He said referral to the criminal justice system should be the exception rather than the rule. The study suggests that this can be achieved while keeping schools safe, he said.

Sending an unruly student to an alternative school is “not solving the root cause,” Whitmire said.

Express-News Staff Writer Pierre Bertrand contributed to this report.