Posted on 03/19/2010 5:11:52 AM PDT by reaganaut1
CHOCOWINITY, N.C. — As school let out one day in January 2008, students from rival towns faced off. Two girls flailed away for several seconds and clusters of boys pummeled each other until teachers pulled them apart.
The fistfights at Southside High School involved no weapons and no serious injuries, and in some ways seemed as old-fashioned as the country roads here in eastern North Carolina. But the punishment was strictly up-to-date: Sheriff’s deputies handcuffed and briefly arrested a dozen students. The school suspended seven of them for a short period and six others from the melee, including the two girls, for the entire semester.
As extra punishment, the girls were told they could not attend Beaufort County’s alternative school for troubled students and were denied aid to study at home.
...
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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Blacks are convicted for violent crimes at much higher rates than whites, and it should not be surprising if they are more often expelled from school. Whites and Asians will NOT send their children to chaotic schools, so the main victims of a policy to ignore disruptive black students will be black students who are trying to learn.
"Zero-tolerance" policies can go overboard, but a Federal government with a racial justice agenda is not going to make things better.
The NY Times is so biased, it is difficult to believe anything they write. If the Times were to actually do some investigative, unbiased journalism, I think they would find the explanation for disproportionate suspensions.
This is a hit piece by the NYT telling us that America is once again a racist nation. Its subtle message is that authority is to not be respected, and, when possible, overturned in a court of law.
I expect more hit pieces by the NYT as the decision that the good people in Texas made regarding school curriculum becomes more known by the American people.
Maybe we should forget about a “panoply” of services and try reading, writing and some of those other things we used to think were important.
HOLY CRAP PEOPLE.
Discipline provides structure.
The reason many of the poor African-American males get into fights is because of LACK OF STRUCTURE at home.
A firm, yet loving dab of discipline never hurt anyone.
The black males that come back and thank me for teaching them are the ones I disciplined the hardest.
The decision of what sort of punishment is appropriate for a particular type of misbehavior is a judgement call based on the student involved, the type of behavior and the circumstances.
Unfortunately, today’s litigation-obsessed society discourgaes the exercise of judgement by administrators.
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