But whether banishing children from schools really makes them safer or serves the community well is increasingly questioned by social scientists and educators. And now the punishment is before the courts in what has become a stark legal test of the approach. Lawyers for the girls ”” who are black ”” say that denying them a semester’s schooling was an unjustified violation of their constitutional right to an education.
The case will be argued on Monday in the North Carolina Supreme Court and has drawn the attention of civil rights, legal aid and education groups around the country.
At issue is the routine use of suspensions not just for weapons or drugs but also for profanity, defiant behavior, pushing matches and other acts that used to be handled with a visit to the principal’s office or detention. Such lesser violations now account for most of the 3.3 million annual suspensions of public school students. That total includes a sharp racial imbalance: poor black students are suspended at three times the rate of whites, a disparity not fully explained by differences in income or behavior.
On March 8, the education secretary, Arne Duncan, lamented “schools that seem to suspend and discipline only young African-American boys” as he pledged stronger efforts to ensure racial equality in schooling.
A growing body of research, scholars say, suggests that heavy use of suspensions does less to pacify schools than to push already troubled students toward academic failure and dropping out ”” and sometimes into what critics have called the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
What are the schools supposed to do, accept the behavior and let these students keep disrupting the students who WANT to benefit from an education?
The article’s focus is on the wisdom of zero-tolerance, an all or nothing policy that leaves fairness and justice in the dust. And, without knowing the details, I’m surprised that the schools didn’t provide some assistance with at-home schooling -but the circumstances may have been as egregious as the spokesman says.
There is also the accusation of underlying racism cited in the article.
[blockquote](Suspension rates contain)…a disparity not fully explained by differences in income or behavior.[/blockquote]
Income may or may not be determinative – IMHO it may have been but is becoming less so. Behavior, though, especially expected and exampled behavior from home and community is the likely explanation for disparities.
Back in the day when I was considering a career in education, I kept running across the radical differences between what politicians from the left and right were saying the schools needed to do and educational and psychological studies of why and what people (students) actually did. The inability to reconcile policy with reality was a major factor in my decision to pursue a different career. We can legislate all the fine-sounding educational standards we wish to, but unfortunately the answer to post #1’s rhetorical question will continue to make them so much wasted effort.
“What are the schools supposed to do”
Bring back the paddle comes to mind.
I taught for 3.5 years at the high school level. Some kids need help, some don’t want it, but want to disrupt everybody. I used to tell these kids that they are stealing the education of others by disrupting the class. They didn’t care…they thought it was funny. I got into trouble for calling these students “thieves”, which is what they were. I’d be very upset if I knew my daughter was distracted on a daily basis because there were some kids in class that could not and would not learn a thing, but were so bored that they had to mess around. The school wants me to teach the kids who don’t want to be taught. I spent a good chunk of my time doing intervention within the classroom when I should have been instructing. I am soooo glad I left education. The few kids who would tell me that I was a great teacher, and who would say that they were “getting it” didn’t make up for the times I got cussed out, hit with thrown objects, “postured” against, threatened, etc…
Well, I told the kids many times that there is plenty of opportunity for them in this world based on their current attitude and motivation. I told them there are plenty of street corners to stand on holding signs asking for work and money. I got into trouble for saying that, by the way.