Ending PUSHOUT Act Authorizes $1 Billion Annually to Ban School Suspensions for Dress Codes and Defiance

The new Ending Punitive, Unfair, School-based Harm that is Overt and Unresponsive to Trauma Act of 2025—or the Ending PUSHOUT Act—is a sweeping proposal aimed at dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline by fundamentally changing how public schools handle discipline. The core of the bill is to stop the discriminatory use of harsh discipline, especially against students of color, and it authorizes a massive $1 billion annually to make it happen. Half of that money is dedicated to competitive grants for schools willing to change their ways, and the other half is for the federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to enforce the changes and collect better data.

The New Rules of Discipline: No More Suspensions for Being Rude

Section 5 of this bill is where the rubber meets the road for parents and students. It creates a competitive grant program where local school districts can get federal funding if they agree to stop using harsh discipline for minor issues. If a district takes this money, they must agree to several non-negotiables. First, they can’t suspend or expel any student from pre-K through fifth grade unless there is a threat of serious physical injury. Second, and this is huge, they must ban suspensions or expulsions for all students (up to grade 12) for things like: defiance, insubordination, skipping class, chronic tardiness, or breaking a dress code rule.

Think about that: no more sending a high schooler home for wearing the 'wrong' shirt or rolling their eyes at a teacher. For parents juggling work and childcare, this means fewer surprise calls forcing them to pick up a kid who was suspended over something minor. Grant recipients also have to ban corporal punishment, seclusion, and chemical or mechanical restraints entirely. This is a direct shift away from punitive, zero-tolerance policies toward supportive, trauma-informed practices.

Following the Money: What Schools Must Do to Get Funded

Districts applying for these grants must prove they are working in schools with big discipline gaps—where students of color, students with disabilities, or LGBTQI students are disciplined much more often than their peers. The grant money must be spent on things like hiring social workers and counselors, implementing restorative justice programs, and training staff on trauma-informed care and implicit bias.

Crucially, the bill explicitly prohibits grant recipients from using any of this federal money to hire or keep school-based law enforcement (SROs), buy surveillance gear (like metal detectors or social media monitoring software), or arm school personnel. This is a clear signal: the federal investment is for support staff, not security hardware. For districts that rely heavily on SROs, this means they will have to find other funding sources for those positions if they want to access this half-billion-dollar grant pool.

The Data Drop: Holding Districts Accountable

Section 4 is the accountability engine of the bill. It requires the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to collect far more detailed data every year on exclusionary discipline. Right now, data collection is often patchy, but this bill mandates tracking every suspension, expulsion, transfer, and law enforcement referral. This data must be broken down by student characteristics like race, disability status, housing status, and even gender identity.

What does this mean for the average person? Transparency. The OCR must publish a public report annually, identifying specific schools and districts that show excessive or discriminatory use of harsh discipline. If your local school is disproportionately suspending Black girls or students with disabilities, the federal government will be collecting and publishing that data for everyone to see. This public shaming mechanism is designed to force districts to clean up their act before they end up on the report.

Focus on the “Pushout” of Girls of Color

Recognizing that girls of color—especially Black and Brown girls—are often overlooked in discipline reform conversations, Section 6 establishes a Joint Task Force specifically to study why these students are being pushed out of school through unfair discipline. This task force will include students, educators, parents, and mental health professionals (but explicitly no law enforcement officers). Their job is to figure out the root causes of these disparities and recommend interventions. This ensures that reform efforts are tailored to address systemic issues, not just surface-level behaviors. It’s about understanding that discipline disparities often mask underlying issues of trauma, bias, and lack of support.