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 or impossible.

During the 2024-25 school year, there were 132,892 discipline actions reported. This is a 3.7% increase (4,687 actions) from the previous school year. For each incident and behavior, one or more actions were selected that could include classroom removal, in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, expulsion, or other discipline action. There were behaviors that resulted in multiple discipline actions.

In terms of discipline actions, in- and out-of-school suspensions accounted for the majority of discipline actions during the 2024-25 school year at 80% of the total actions. This is consistent with the previous school year.

There was a total of 109,438 unique behavior incidents reported during the 2024-25 school year. In each incident, one or more students could have been involved and there may be multiple discipline actions.

Three of the 16 behavior categories accounted for 80% of the total behavior incidents: detrimental behavior, disobedience/defiant or repeated interference, and other code of conduct violations.

Drug and alcohol violations accounted for 10% of behaviors.

High-severity behaviors, including but not limited to dangerous weapons, felony, robbery, and sexual violence, accounted for 1% of behaviors.

Here is a more detailed analysis of this information.

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.