Last spring, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina decided it was time to reform their disciplinary policies in light of contradictory data that showed black students in the area were five times more likely to be suspended than white students.
Under the leadership of both the new superintendent and the deputy superintendent, the huge area serving 53,000 students, of whom 29% of black students, in partnership with a Massachusetts-based nonprofit group Engaging Schools, which helps schools develop more equitable practices, to craft more reform policies.
“A big part of our strategic plan as we move forward is equity and making sure we look at things from the perspective of stocks within the region,” said Jesse Pratt, deputy district manager. “When we saw the inappropriateness of the suspensions among our students, we knew that had to be addressed. We want to do the right thing by these kids.”
He said the district is going through a year-long process and the final plan will not be implemented until the next school year. He added that part of the process is to change the students’ code of conduct and also to train teachers in better ways to deal with disciplinary issues.
The organization said the North Carolina area was part of a wave of institutions that have reached out to engaging schools over the past year to review punishment protocols in light of racial equality.
As children readjust to in-person classrooms, discipline issues are growing and the policies governing them are coming back to the fore, but this time, following the shocks of Covid-19 and the National Racial Justice Movement, many districts are reassessing disciplinary protocols with equity in mind.
regions across the country, including Dallas And Iowa CityPunishment policies that disproportionately affect students of color who have historically bore the brunt of suspensions, expulsions, and other harsh punishments.
In place of the old practices, many are implementing more reformed, trauma-informed programs and policies and aiming for less severe penalties, especially for self-infractions such as disorderly behavior or disobedience. Under some of these approaches, teachers are given more culturally responsive training, more classroom management skills to manage misbehavior, and will reduce the use of suspensions, especially for younger students.
Howard Henderson, founding director of the Justice Research Center at Texas Southern University.
A 2020 study by the Center for Civil Rights Reparations at the UCLA Civil Rights Project and the Learning Policy Institute, which analyzed federal data from the 2015-16 school year I found that black students Five times as many teaching days were lost due to suspensions from white students.
He said that this excessive use of harsh disciplinary measures had caused a host of negative effects on these children. You start to see these students don’t do well academically, they don’t do well in civic engagement. They do not participate in society. From an educational level, they don’t investigate like everyone else who hasn’t been stopped.” “They are more likely to end up in juvenile detention, which means they are also more likely to end up in an adult prison system at a later point in their lives.”
The school-to-prison pipeline that takes students – largely of color – into the criminal justice system has been well documented through solid research. according to Worksheet Published in 2019 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, students assigned to schools with high suspension rates are up to 20 percent more likely to be arrested and later jailed, and less likely to attend four-year college.
2021 study It was published in the Journal of American Psychologist that “among black students, those who were suspended for a minor offense during the first year of study had significantly lower scores a year or two later than students who were not suspended.”
The Obama administration attempted to address racial disparities in school penalties by issuing federal Guidelines for Discipline in the ClassroomBut those measures were later rescinded by President Donald Trump, who said the guidance was arrogant.
But Henderson feels that the combination of Covid and the movement sparked by the killing of George Floyd has raised awareness and increased momentum around the issue once again, especially among teachers and administrators.
“When you’re facing an epidemic and having to learn about how you’re teaching school and students online, you realize how much racial disparities there are,” he said. “That’s definitely on their mind.”
Richard Welch, associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at New York University, is partnering with districts to help them reduce racial inequality in school discipline.
He said that problems with behavior and fighting in schools have increased with the return to in-person education. Many kids need to relearn how to behave in the classroom, so school discipline is very much on the radar of district and school administrators right now, he said.
“What schools will realize is that many of the school discipline reforms that have seen positive benefits are hugely applicable to the school environment that we have now in 2021-22 with the epidemic of socialization of students returning to the classroom,” he said. “I think you’ll have a lot of districts that can sell school discipline reforms, not just to reduce suspensions, but to improve the overall school climate and to ensure that we can actually improve academic outcomes as well.”
The important thing to note, Welch said, is that while some interventions such as behavioral change have been shown to reduce suspension rates, there is still little evidence that they will also reduce racial disparities. For this, he said, managing the classroom for teachers and promoting the cultural responsibility of teachers are better solutions.
There is also a challenge in implementing these programmes, he said, in gaining advocacy, and in replacing the punitive mentality that is entrenched in schools.
“There is a dissonance because what you really uproot is a punitive mindset where teachers rely on suspension as the primary way to manage behavior. So you still have those two mindsets that are in the same area, that tension of sorts where there is an appreciation and demand for alternatives like restorative justice, but still responsible They feel they are using the comment appropriately.”
Caitlin Anderson, a professor at Lehigh University who focuses on issues of equality and opportunity in educational institutions, said another, more emerging challenge to bridging racial gaps is the all-consuming race theory movement, which resists any racist lens in schools.
“I think it’s important to keep in mind that no matter what some schools start doing, there are also state legislatures actively trying to prevent schools from doing this in certain states,” she said. “Some have made it so difficult to mention race at all in certain kinds of contexts that it’s very difficult to address methodological issues, which when it comes to student discipline often focus on race, as well as disability status, so at the state level it’s really going to hamper some of those efforts.”
Despite this, Anderson said she has seen many schools that are or at least begin to take steps toward equity in the form of audits and plans. She said she’s also seen a spike in schools’ interest in using more trauma-informed methods after the deaths of Covid and Floyd.
“There is a growing awareness, not only of the conversations about anti-racism, but of the fact that we need to reintegrate children into a more supportive environment, and that punishing them for representation in class will not be productive.”
