News
Suspensions
continued from page 1
As it happens, federal officials on Tues-
day released more statistics from the data
they have been gathering for years explicit-
ly linking a student’s race to suspensions,
expulsions, and the criminal justice system.
But the question remains, given added
urgency for families like the Tarvers: How
to dismantle the school to prison pipeline —
for good?
‘Debunking,’ Denial
Over the generations, finding a way to
turn around zero-tolerance school discipline
policies and other factors that push Black
kids out of schools and into the law enforce-
ment system has proven a tough nut to
crack.
Experts say that’s because each student’s
case is personal and schools won’t always
release information about their disciplinary
patterns.
Another stumbling block is denial, includ-
ing
the
American
Psychological
Association’s 2006 report “debunking” the
link between school discipline and the even-
tual incarceration of students.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration’s
2011 Positive School Discipline initiative
was announced last July after one of the
largest studies of its kind in U.S. history
showed 60 percent of nearly a million Texas
school kids were suspended or expelled
over a period of six years – including 83
percent of Black male students (compared
to 59 percent of white male students) and 70
percent of Black female students (compared
to 37 percent of white female students).
“Only 3 percent of the disciplinary actions
were for conduct for which state law man-
dates suspensions and expulsions; the
remainder of disciplinary actions was made
at the discretion of school officials, primari-
ly in response to violations of local schools’
conduct codes,” the study said.
Overall, virtually every study reviewed by
The Skanner News for this series indicated
too many students are being kicked out of
school as a form of discipline, but that
Black students and those in special educa-
tion are singled out the most – with Black
special education students being by far the
most likely to be excluded from school.
Shame is a Barrier
Daniel Losen is one of the top researchers
on the issue nationwide, which is saying
something; literally an ocean of data docu-
ments the ways black students are being
pushed out of public schools by excessive
suspensions and expulsions.
Further, the research details how young
people are moving in a direct pathway out
of the classroom and into the jails and pris-
ons, which is why even the Obama
Administration calls it the “school to prison
pipeline.”
“The public has a right to know this infor-
mation but oftentimes we don’t see this
information,” Losen told The Skanner
News. “The people are shocked to see that
30 to 50 percent of students from one sub-
group to another are being suspended in
middle school in a given year – but they
shouldn’t be but they’re shocked because
first of all I think that if the public knew
more about this that these kids wouldn’t be
suspended so frequently.”
(A recent report by The Multnomah
County Commission on Children, Families
& Community said almost 40 percent of all
Black students have been suspended or
expelled — a rate 3.5 times the rate of white
students — and that the students are pun-
ished more harshly for offenses, and that the
offenses triggering the discipline are more a
matter of “subjective judgement” of the
adult rather than required suspensions such
as fighting, drugs, etc. Washington State
does not have any comparable data from a
government agency.)
Losen says the issue is a tough one to
grapple with in part because for parents –
the main advocates for kids – the discipli-
nary process is embarrassing for the whole
family, and often involves labeling them
“troublemakers” rather than understanding
the big picture of what the students need in
the classroom.
“A lot of times, if it happens to your kid,
you’re sort of ashamed, you think ‘what did
my kid do wrong?’ Parents don’t realize that
there’s often a problem with the school pol-
icy or practice, lack of training for the
teachers in the school, lack of classroom
management, lack of behavioral manage-
ment,” Losen said. “There are things
schools can do to really improve things.”
anticipating that the data is not pretty.”
The LEV has worked for several years on
the issue, also convenes public hearings and
forums, and has tried without success to
pass legislation to change how discipline is
meted out in the schools. Their website fea-
tures an informational audio podcast series
and fact-filled blogs on the issues around
youth incarceration – particularly the cost.
Wilkens is enthusiastic about Washington
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Randy Dorn’s steps so far.
“School push-out is a pretty tough issue to
tackle in a lot of ways because it’s some-
thing that communities that are most
directly impacted by disproportionate disci-
pline in the school/prison pipeline issues
have felt for more than two decades,”
‘Parents don’t realize that there’s often a
problem with the school policy or practice, lack
of training for the teachers in the school, lack of
classroom management, lack of behavioral
management’
--Daniel Losen
Following the Money
Mark McKechnie of Youth Rights and
Justice in Oregon says that even as the
schools have quietly been pushing kids out
of the classroom as a form of discipline,
communities have increasingly criminal-
ized youth behavior – all of which combines
to wallop municipal budgets with a fiscal
sledgehammer.
“The juvenile court system was created
originally to recognize the differences
between children and adults, and recogniz-
ing that when they got in trouble there were
different approaches beyond the traditional
incarceration,” McKechnie says.
“But in the last 20 years there has been an
increasing trend to incarcerate youth, partic-
ularly under mandatory sentencing laws and
automatic waivers of youth to adult court,
and in Oregon, Measure 11, which waives
youth to adult court automatically and also
imposes mandatory minimum sentences on
both juveniles and adults who fall under that
law.”
“The expense is a big issue that both
states and local governments are running
right now, and I’d say there’s more data than
ever showing that the sort of traditional
approaches to juvenile crime, which tend
towards incarceration, actually are not very
effective in achieving the goals of reducing
crime,” McKechnie says. “The recent Annie
E Casey Foundation report basically shows
that the recidivism rates for youth who’ve
been incarcerated are extremely high in
most states, and the few states that have
really bucked that trend and opted for more
community based responses probation and
different kinds of evidence-based mental
health treatments and other kinds of inter-
ventions, have actually seen reductions in
juvenile crime while at the same time
they’re reducing the rates of incarceration.”
Data, Data, Data
In Washington State, League of Education
Voters state field coordinator Maggie
Wilkens says “data is the magic word” in
advocating for school disciplinary reforms
on push-out.
And when state officials start publicizing
the data they are collecting on dispropor-
tionate suspensions and expulsions in 2012,
it’s not going to look good, she warns.
“It’s a big step because, again, we’re
Wilkens says. “We can trace it back and it’s
well established in the juvenile justice sys-
tem as well, that there’s disproportionate
rates of incarceration and just plain ole con-
tact with police people.
“However in the school system, policy-
makers have been a little slow to respond to
some of this, because there’s really this lack
of data around the issue.”
Sheila Warren, founder and director of the
Portland Parents’ Union, is a local standard-
bearer for the movement against push-out.
Partnering with the national group Dignity
in Our Schools, the PPU holds parent meet-
ings every second Wednesday of the month
at their offices in the Left Bank Building.
“It was blatant when folks looked at the
data from all around the country, that the
zero tolerance has been the very thing that
has created the epidemic that kids are being
pushed out,” she says.
Warren, who has worked on the issue
since 2007, is both hopeful and frustrated at
Oregon’s progress; while she has testified
before state officials and facilitated meet-
ings at schools, she says she – and the
overlooked families she often represents —
are still often left out when power-brokers
get together to talk about solutions.
She sees the OEIB meeting March 8 at
SEI as a victory – but says neither she nor
her group were actually invited to the
forum.
“Members of the board came up to us
after out testimony and talked about setting
up a forum – but when it came down to it
actually happening, I heard about it third-
hand,” Warren said. “Even though
Tamberlee and my testimony is what con-
vinced them to hold the forum they didn’t
even call us back to tell us it was scheduled.
“The forum is at SEI which is great
because it’s a safe place and people will feel
comfortable going there,” she said. “But
SEI already gets it – their families are not
the ones struggling with expulsions. The
people who are suffering the most are in the
apartment complexes, they’re on the edge,
they’re not plugged into a successful system
like SEI,” Warren said.
“What is the state really doing to reach
out to the people who are already left out?”
Empowering Families
Read the rest of this story online at
www.theskanner.com
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March 7, 2012 The Portland Skanner Page 5