Discipline, Behavior, and School Climate

CDE’s Dropout Prevention Office supports the implementation of statute and district strategies in discipline, behavior, and school climate. This includes the following:

Partnering with CDE’s Data Services team on the statewide Discipline data collection, reporting, and use of discipline data.
Facilitating work groups and task forces, managing training related to discipline statute, and supporting districts and the public in finding information about school discipline, behavior, and school climate statute.
Supporting implementation of effective practices through management of the Expelled and At-Risk Student Services (EARSS) grant and compiling information on best practices and training from CDE offices or other organizations.

Learning Environment District Profile Reports

Trends in Discipline Collection

The method for the discipline collection changed in 2023-24 with more detailed reports required as well as student-level data reporting. The change in the collection will allow additional analysis and more precise understanding of discipline and behavior. However, with the transition, there may be changes in some data points due to how the data was collected that make comparisons to previous years challenging.

During the 2023-24 school year, there were 128,205 discipline actions and 65,790 students received one or more discipline action.

There were a total of 103,840 behavior incidents reported during the 2023-2024 school year. Note that if there was more than one student involved in the incident or a student received more than one discipline action following an incident, those incidents would each only be counted once in this number.

The most common behavior incidents that resulted in discipline actions were detrimental behavior, disobedience/defiant or repeated interference, and other code of conduct violations, accounting for 76.4% of all behavior incidents.

In terms of discipline actions, in- and out-of-school suspensions accounted for the majority of discipline actions during the 2023-24 school year at 84.6% of the total actions.

Regarding the demographic information of students disciplined in the last school year, the proportion of students in each category is similar to past years.

Male students accounted for 70% of those in the discipline collection, students in 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grade accounted for 60% of those involved in a discipline incident, Hispanic or Latino students accounted for 47% of those disciplined, and students with special education services represented 24.4% of students within the discipline collection.

Section Navigation

Navigate to the pages below to explore discipline-related topics in the following categories:

Policy

Provides background information on state policy related to discipline, recently passed legislation, and key definitions that are outlined in statute.

Data

Provides an overview of the data that is collected in Colorado related to discipline and behavior, district profile reports, current and previous school year discipline data, and navigation to information about the discipline data collection.

Best Practices

Provides information on evidence-based strategies, resources, and connections to organizations that support improvements in discipline, behavior, and school climate.