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Exercises 8.11 Exercises

1.

Anyplace High School (not a real school) has a total of 2500 students. The racial breakdown for the school by grade and race is given below:

\begin{equation*} \begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|} \hline \amp \text{White} \amp \text{Black/African American} \amp \text{Hispanic/Latinx} \amp \text{Asian-American/Pacific Islander} \amp \text{Indigenous} \amp \text{Total} \\ \hline \text{Freshman} \amp 295 \amp 267 \amp 126 \amp 37 \amp 15 \amp 740 \\ \hline \text{Sophomore} \amp 269 \amp 248 \amp 124 \amp 35 \amp 14 \amp 690 \\ \hline \text{Junior} \amp 217 \amp 213 \amp 118 \amp 30 \amp 12 \amp 590 \\ \hline \text{Senior} \amp 191 \amp 173 \amp 82 \amp 24 \amp 10 \amp 480 \\ \hline \end{array} \end{equation*}

The following information is also true about Anyplace: Many students at Anyplace High School receive accommodations for disabilities. Currently, 10% of freshmen, 8% of sophomores, 6% of juniors, and 6% of seniors receive accommodations for disabilities.

A student activist group has been tracking out-of-school suspensions for the past semester at the school. They found all incidents of students being suspended, and then counted the incidents by racial group. The student activists identified 75 suspensions of White students, 72 suspensions of Black/African-American students, 65 suspensions of Hispanic/Latinx students, and 22 suspensions from other groups.

Use the information about Anyplace High School to answer the following questions.

  1. What is the total number of students in the school that receive accommodations for disabilities?

  2. What is the percentage of the school that receives accommodations for disabilities? Would you have predicted that the percentage would be higher or lower? Why?

  3. A student with a disability is suspended. What is the probability that the student is either a junior or a senior?

  4. The student activist group uses their data to make a claim that there is a racial bias in suspensions in an editorial in the school newspaper. To support their claim, the group states that there are fewer Black/African-American students and a similar suspension rate. Do you agree with their claim and support?

  5. Using the data from the student group, calculate the probability that two separate students are sent to the principal’s office for separate offences for the following: Two Hispanic/Latinx students not suspended One Black/African-American student suspended and one White student suspended One White student not suspended and one Other student suspended

  6. Critical Thinking: Recall the definition of independence for probability. If someone wanted to investigate if disability status is independent across racial groups, what additional data would be needed?

2.

Using the mathematics from this module along with additional sources you wish to use, make an infographic about school discipline and school-to-prison pipeline.