"Pushouts" are victims of discriminatory discipline procedures in public schools. Pushouts first came into view with the publication of a book by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial and the Southern Regional Council. The book is called "The Student Pushout: Victim of Continued Resistance to Desegregation." The Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has been collecting statistical information regarding subjective determinations based on race that enter into disciplinary actions that result in students being pushed out of schools. The figures indicate that the percentage of minorities subject to disciplinary action, suspensions, or expulsions exceed their percentages in school systems. Not every suspended student is being pushed out, of course. The disproportionate suspension statistics may actually reflect behavior. In one school district the school superintendent testified in open court that institutional racism was the reason for the disproportion. Black and other minority kids are being pushed out of schools across the country as the statistics from Dallas, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Boston, and Dade County, Florida, indicate. To the Office of Civil Rights and the Justice Department a disproportionate number of suspensions of minority students are "red flags," signals that something may be wrong. Whether those two federal agencies responded properly to the "red flags" is open to serious question. (Author/JM)