Wednesday, January 08, 2014

When the Federal Govt is controlling CLASSROOM BEHAVIORS there is a PROBLEM and it isn’t JUST in the classroom

Like CRIME, where in the most populous entities, LARGE CITIES, like on like crimes predominate, is this the situation in the schools? Does the federal govt now seek to control behavior and discipline in everyday situation in the SCHOOLS?
Where does this end?
The Obama administration is issuing new recommendations on classroom discipline that seek to end the apparent disparities in how students of different races are punished for violating school rules.

Civil rights advocates have long said that a “school-to-prison” pipeline stems from overly zealous school discipline policies targeting black and Hispanic students that bring them out of school and into the court system.

Attorney General Eric Holder said the problem often stems from well intentioned “zero-tolerance” policies that too often inject the criminal justice system into the resolution of problems. Zero tolerance policies, a tool that became popular in the 1990s, often spell out uniform and swift punishment for offenses such as truancy, smoking or carrying a weapon. Violators can lose classroom time or become saddled with a criminal record.
Zero Tolerance as a concrete policy without exception will always be STUPID.

"Ordinary troublemaking can sometimes provoke responses that are overly severe, including out of school suspensions, expulsions and even referral to law enforcement and then you end up with kids that end up in police precincts instead of the principal’s office," Holder said.

In American schools, black students without disabilities were more than three times as likely as whites to be expelled or suspended, according to government civil rights data collection from 2011-2012. Although black students made up 15 percent of students in the data collection, they made up more than a third of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and more than a third of students expelled.

More than half of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were Hispanic or black, according to the data.
Were the populations of those classes overwhelmingly Hispanic or Black? The school populations?
Just asking, you see.
Research suggests the racial disparities in how students are disciplined are not explained by more frequent or more serious misbehavior by students of color, according to a letter sent to schools with the recommendations by the departments.

"For example, in our investigations, we have found cases where African-American students were disciplined more harshly and more frequently because of their race than similarly situated white students," the letter said. "In short, racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem."

Holder and Duncan were interviewed on Tuesday on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show as part of a national effort to draw attention to the issue.
Why not on Hannity or Kelly as well? AFRAID OF CRITICAL THINKING? Of tough hard questions for which there are only politically, racially, and societal divisive answers? 

1 comment:

Pastorius said...

What a fucking joke.

I'm not even going to add anything to that.