Posted on 01/12/2006 12:00:30 PM PST by Sopater
Nearly two decades after it began tracking student discipline, Seattle Public Schools continues to struggle with a chronic problem: African American students are still far more likely than their white peers to be suspended or expelled.
The "discipline gap" persists even as the district drastically lowered the overall number of students who were expelled last year, new statistics show.
Compared with white students, African Americans were nearly twice as likely last year to receive short-term suspensions, lasting 10 or fewer days. Long-term suspensions were imposed on black students more than twice the time.
"We're still seeing a lot of disproportionality," said School Board member Darlene Flynn, chairwoman of Student Learning Committee. "That hasn't improved at all."
The disparity was investigated by the Seattle P-I in 2002 in a special report, "An Uneven Hand," which found that black students were being disciplined at much higher rates than students of other races -- and had been for at least two decades.
The district has made an effort in recent years to provide better training to teachers and administrators and focus on alternatives to suspending or expelling students. But short- and long-term suspension rates are virtually unchanged since 2000, and in some cases are higher.
Flynn said the district needs to do a better job of lowering discipline rates, especially for black and Hispanic students.
READ THE REPORT
The Seattle Public Schools discipline report is available online at www.seattleschools.org/area/siso/disprof/2005/disprof_2005.xml, then click "Student Outcome Measures." The section on discipline rates begins on Page 41.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
She should get the principal's response in writing and take his negligent behavior to the school board. I suppose negligence is "cultural" too.
Sadly, the way Seattle will likely remedy this problem is to suspend white kids and give black kids a pass for the same infraction. That way white suspension numbers rise while black suspension numbers fall until they are at parity. Problem solved! Administration happy!
The "chicken and egg" problem. Why are the children poor? Could it be that mom and dad were underperforming slackers in school and can't make a decent living now? Poverty doesn't cause behavior problems. Behavior problems cause poverty. Once it starts, the bad behavior and poor living conditions persist. Mom and dad are too stupid and ill behaved themselves to break the cycle. Children of "wealthy" parents often misbehave as a consequence of neglect while parents are pursuing the almighty dollar and indulging themselves. Inherited wealth rarely persists beyond a generation as wealth is a consequence of behavior that isn't understood by the inheritor.
Dead On.
Anecdotely, I remember the kids who were suspended in school and they tended to be the poorest kids. Very seldom was a middle-class or rich kid suspended. In our case, however, we were given the option of performing "work" after school to avoid suspension i.e. cutting the grass. This was to avoid getting zeroes for the tests that were missed. The poor kids never seemed interested in that. They just took the days off. I was friends with one of the kids (druggie) and he told me the days off were preferred because they had to pass him anyway. Since they couldn't flunk him and he didn't care about his grades, he stayed at home and smoked dope when he got suspended while his mom worked. Win-win in his eyes.
Oddly, he told me that the teachers gave him F's but the principal always changed the grades so he would pass. A high number of kids flunking looked bad for the principal.
He knows better than to write it. Using a tape recorder is preferred but watch out. If you pull one out at a school board meeting to play the words of an administrator, they'll react as if you pulled out a hand grenade.
Nothing upsets people more than hearing something they are trying not to hear.
Great post. Thanks!
There is no evidence that having married parents is a significant factor. Correlatiod does not equal causation. Parental education and income levels, and age, also have very strong correlations to children's behavior and eventual educational achievement and criminality. And I don't think it would be hard to prove that parental rap sheet length is one of the strongest predictors for out of control children who grow up to engage in criminal behavior. On the other hand, you'll find very good outcomes among children of financially self-sufficient single parents. Outcomes for children raised only by their widowed mothers, when the father died before or shortly after the chidren's birth, are indistinguishable from those of children raised in 2-parent homes, exposing the falsehood of the notion that lack of a father is a major causative factor of poor outcomes for children.
Another elementary school friend was active in scouts when I returned to San Diego in 1969. He was doing fine until he tagged up with the druggies and smokers. He had an illigitimate kid and never managed to graduate from high school. His dad was a Lt in the Navy and lived and a slightly nicer house than my own a couple blocks away.
I could writes volumes of anecdotes describing perfectly nice middle class white kids that grew up to be below average performers. Not criminals, but just barely productive enough to stay off welfare.
As with any distribution, you have success and failure. The class president and valedictorian was Valerie Zavala. She lived two doors down from my house. She earned a PhD at Harvard. We only had ONE valedictorian when I graduated. No need to assuage the egos of 10+ people. There was a number one and she was the genuine article. She is apparently the nightly news magazine anchor at PBS station KCET in Los Angeles now.
I would recommend to any person who thinks that racism is the reason that black kids are disciplined more often in Seattle public schools, go buy a police scanner and just listen to the dispatch activity in the different precincts for a couple of nights.
There are five precincts. Listen to every pct's activity level on consecutive Sat. nights. The pct with the highest percentage of black residents is the South pct.
You will be astounded at overwhelming difference in call activty between the South pct and the North pct. And North isn't slow. South is off the hook nightly.
Facts is facts. Whether you believe it's nature, nurture, culture, or a conspiracy of the illuminati, the problems of crime in the black community is undeniable.
The effects of the "feminization" of the American male is something I must deal with everyday.
What's your definition of "present"?
Silly American bumpkins! Don't you realize the only reason there are more Blacks in jail than Whites because the racist pig cops only pay attention to Black crime?
Let's take murder for example. This is a crime where every case is examined closely and we find that most murders are actually committed by Blacks and uh wait a minute...
A culture / lifestyle that demands respect yet has none........everything is owed, everyone is potential prey, all actions are diversional, no guilt, no remorse , self imposed hollow pride. Thats a shame that such individuals regardless of race allow themselves to be reliant upon a doctrine of welfare, wanderlust and a washed up future of waiting for someone else to make their life better vs taking responsibility for their own future.......
Just my opinion of course......Stay Safe Ern !
And in other news, men use urinals more than women at a rate of more than two to one...
We need to educate the women on the proper use of a urinal to make these statistics more fair.
I am no racist, but I sure am a culturist.
She tried, nothing happened- unfortunately in this case a majority of the school board shares the same ethnic background and desire for excuses as does the principal.
That is not mainstreaming. Mainstreaming is taking a kid like my daughter who has brain damage and putting her in the regular classroom.
My daughter does not have behavior problems. She has a speech problem. She didn't learn to talk until she was 5, and it has affected her reading and writing. Instead of putting her in a special day class with kids with other issues where she wouldn't be challenged, they've kept her in the regular classroom.
She is one of the best behaved, and she is one of the best at math in her class. She does get pulled out for speech therapy, and she used to get pulled out for occupational therapy.
Growing up, I had a friend who was legally blind. She was also in the regular classroom, and the kids and teachers loved her. She had special equipment to help her read. The kids helped her do other things in the classroom. She was an inspiring person to know. When she was an adult, she got her master's degree in Speech Therapy.
Anyway, don't lump mainstreaming kids with special needs with kids who are behavior problems. I don't want my well-behaved kids in a classroom with misbehaving kids. I do accomodations can be made to teach some special needs kids in the regular classroom.
Probably a good reason to be seeking employment in a better location. A frequent comment around here is that a fish rots from the head down.
Garden variety two parent household ala Ward and June Cleaver
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