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Now the federal government wants to run the classroom. Not just what’s taught, who gets tested for what or what gets served for lunch, but who gets punished for what and how. Now Washington dictates on discipline. That was the clear word out of Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore yesterday as the attorney general and secretary of education announced new federal guidelines and mandates on school discipline. The goal? To disrupt the “school-to-prison pipeline” which Eric Holder and Arne Duncan say plagues our nation. Specifically, to eliminate what they call racial disparities in discipline. It turns out that black...

<p>Attorney General Eric Holder recently made comments suggesting that Zero Tolerance policies in US schools place minority students at an unfair advantage.</p> <p>Education experts blasted a recent Department of Justice directive, which they say seems to advocate a racial quota system for punishing school kids for such transgressions as being late or chewing gum in class.</p>

Education experts decried a new memo from the Departments of Justice and Education that instructs public schools throughout the country to cease punishing disruptive students if they fall into certain racial categories, such as black or Hispanic. The letter, released on Wednesday, states that it is a violation of federal law for schools to punish certain races more than others, even if those punishments stem from completely neutral rules. For example, equal numbers of black students and white students should be punished for tardiness, even if black students are more often tardy than white students. (RELATED: DOJ to schools: It’s...

John Dryden The Batavia school board Tuesday disciplined high school teacher John Dryden, saying he had "mischaracterized" the intentions of teachers and administrators when he advised students they had the right not to incriminate theselves, before administering a survey about risky behavior. Only one board member, Jon Gaspar, voted "no." He declined to specify why he voted that way, other than to say it was due to his "feelings." Dryden will receive a letter of remedy, which outlines certain actions he must do or face more consequences. Superintendent Jack Barshinger declined to specify what the remedies are, asking instead...

OAKLAND -- The Oakland school board on Thursday night unanimously approved an agreement with the Office for Civil Rights to reduce the number of out-of-school suspensions of its African-American students. Parents, community organizers, district staff members and other leaders spoke passionately about the need to pass -- and to fully realize -- the plan, and to involve students, families and teachers in the push for change. "We're here today to ante up and reclaim our children," said Chris Chatmon, director of the district's African American Male Achievement initiative. Chatmon said the resolution will give the system the sense of urgency...

Sacramento County's four largest school districts are among dozens in California that have gotten letters from the state saying they have a disproportionate number of African American students in their special education programs who are designated as emotionally disturbed.... ..."There is a disproportionate number of African American boys. Why that category?" said Diana Blackmon,director of special services for the Washington Unified School District in West Sacramento. "We certainly don't see it with autism,retardation or deafness. That,off the top,leads me to think something more is going on." ....[Diana Blackmon, director of special services for the Washington Unified School District in West...

President Barack Obama recently signed an executive order hiring race-sensitive bureaucrats to hold meetings and mandate racial discipline quotas. The order charges his new racial justice team, in part, with "promoting a positive school climate that does not rely on methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools." In plain English, that means that if different races have different incidences of disciplinary action, those of a favored race who act worse will be punished less, or those of a disfavored race who act better will be punished more, or both. It's true that a higher percentage of black students...

In March 2010, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that his department was “going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement.” The secretary was speaking on the 45th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” when state troopers savagely beat and teargassed peaceful voting-rights marchers in Selma, Alabama. Duncan fleetingly acknowledged the racial progress that the nation had made since that shameful era, but he was soon back in the 1960s: “Skeptics sometimes tell me, ‘Slow down.’ They say our agenda to pursue equal opportunity is too ambitious. To them, I simply repeat what Martin Luther King said many years ago: ‘We can’t wait.’...

President Barack Obama is backing a controversial campaign by progressives to regulate schools’ disciplinary actions so that members of major racial and ethnic groups are penalized at equal rates, regardless of individuals’ behavior. His July 26 executive order established a government panel to promote “a positive school climate that does not rely on methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools.” “African Americans lack equal access to highly effective teachers and principals, safe schools, and challenging college-preparatory classes, and they disproportionately experience school discipline,” said the order, titled “White House Initiative On Educational Excellence.” Because of those causes, the...

Raising new questions about the effectiveness of school discipline, a report scheduled for release on Tuesday found that 31 percent of Texas students were suspended off campus or expelled at least once during their years in middle and high school — at an average of almost four times apiece. When also considering less serious infractions punished by in-school suspensions, the rate climbed to nearly 60 percent, according to the study by the Council of State Governments, with one in seven students facing such disciplinary measures at least 11 times. The study linked these disciplinary actions to lower rates of graduation...

African American boys who are suspended at double and triple the rates of their white male peers. English language learners who, for years, remain in separate classes, falling behind their peers and scoring poorly on standardized tests. Disabled students and those with illnesses who are shortchanged at school because of their impairments. The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights received nearly 7,000 complaints this fiscal year, an 11 percent increase and the largest jump in at least 10 years, according to data provided by the department. The increase comes as the office proceeds with 54 compliance reviews in districts...

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...

Mayor: School boss should apologize to boy who drew cross By Laura Crimaldi and Laurel J. Sweet | Tuesday, December 15, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage Photo by Taunton Gazette Taunton Mayor Charles Crowley called School Superintendent Julie Hackett from his vacation today and asked her to apologize both privately and publicly to the family of an 8-year-old special needs student sent home from school and ordered to undergo psychological testing after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross. “Mayor Crowley’s sentiments were that he would hope Dr. Hackett would meet with the family today,...

A California mom says her public school administrators violated her daughter's First Amendment rights when they ordered the seventh-grader to take off her pro-life T-shirt. Anna Amador has gone to court on behalf of her daughter, who she says was ordered by her principal to change her shirt on "National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day." The shirt the girl was wearing displays two graphic pictures of a fetus growing in the womb. The incident occurred in April 2008 at McSwain Elementary School, a K-8 school in Merced, Calif. Amador alleges in her legal complaint that school Principal Terrie Rohrer, Assistant Principal C.W....

Public schools are filled with eager, fresh-faced youngsters, and prisons contain many rough-looking adults with uninviting personalities. But put aside that difference and you find some important similarities between the two places -- government-run facilities where individuals are held for a specific number of years without their consent, at the mercy of their custodians. For years, the Supreme Court has been doing its best to further blur the distinction by giving public-school officials the same powers as the warden of San Quentin. So it was a mild surprise last week to learn there are some abridgments of freedom and invasions...

There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage. It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not...

An elementary student in Marion County was arrested Thursday after school officials found her cutting food during lunch with a knife that she brought from home, police said. The 10-year-old girl, a student at Sunrise Elementary School in Ocala, was charged possession of a weapon on school property, which is a felony. According to authorities, school employees spotted the girl cutting her food while she was eating lunch and took the steak knife from her. The girl told sheriff's deputies that she had brought the knife to school on more than one occasion in the past. Students told officials that...

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WJZ) ― Eyewitness News has learned a Baltimore County teacher is accused of stabbing a student in the hand. The incident happened Wednesday morning at Randallstown High School. Baltimore County police tell Eyewitness News the 17-year-old boy was standing over the teacher's desk. The teacher had asked the boy to be seated several times. Finally, the teacher told the boy to step back and when he didn't, she stabbed him in the hand with either a pen or a pencil. Police are still investigating the incident, but so far no charges have been filed. (© MMVII, CBS...

UNION -- A Monroe County elementary art teacher was suspended without pay for putting masking tape under the noses of about 25 third-graders in a joking attempt to quiet them, Superintendent Lyn Guy said. The Monroe County Board of Education voted Monday night to uphold the 10-day suspension of Donna Spangler, an art teacher at Peterstown Elementary School. Spangler's suspension ended Monday and she has since returned to work. "I didn't think it was very funny,'' Guy said Tuesday. "It wasn't right and she (Spangler) made a huge mistake in judgment and she has paid for it.'' Guy said the...

Schoolyard 'boob tag' lands middleschooler in trouble By Felix Doligosa Jr., Rocky Mountain News May 18, 2006 A game of tag at a middle school in Golden has police investigating a 14-year-old boy for unlawful sexual contact. The game played at Bell Middle School is called "boob tag," and kids choose who's "it" by touching a breast. "This is not appropriate, but it's a game of consent," said Lynn Sharpe, the mother of the suspect, Cole Sharpe. "It should be punished, but not prosecuted." Golden police declined to release details about the case and would say only that there is...