This study is an analysis of office referral data and trends over a three year period at Lacy Elementary School. The data were organized by disciplinary incidents and actions, and then broken down by gender and ethnicity of the students. Six categories were shown for each disciplinary action to represent gender and ethnicity: White Male (WM), White Female (WF), Hispanic Male (HM), Hispanic Female (HF), Black Male (BM) and Black Female (BF). After analyzing the data presented, I will recommend a professional development training for the staff of Lacy Elementary. Data Analysis for Office Referrals Table 1 is a summary of office referrals for disciplinary incidents. The data indicate that the general trend of most incidents is a decrease over the past three years. However, five categories have shown a substantial increase in incidents between 2004 and 2007: Student assault …show more content…
As with the office referral rates, the majority of disciplinary actions are given to Black male students, with an exception for students expelled for weapons (1 student per year in both 2004-2005 and 2006-2007, and both students being White males). “Other” disciplinary actions and out-of-school suspensions have increased over the past three years. Overall, both in-school and out-of-school suspensions are the most common form of disciplinary action, though the rate of in-school suspensions has decreased. It is also interesting to note that though the incidence of corporal punishment decreased over three years, 93.94% of the 33 cases of corporal punishment in 2006-2007 were Black students. This distribution is much more uneven than in 2004-2005 (89 incidents: 61.79% Black students, 6.74% Hispanic students, and 31.46% White students) and 2005-2006 (60 incidents: 73.33% Black students, 3.33% Hispanic students, and 23.33% White
Dupper, David R. , and Amy E. Montgomery Dingus. "Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools : A Continuing Challenge for School Social Workers." Schools and Children 30.4 (2008): 243-250. Print.
Groves, S. L., & Groves, D. L. (1981). Professional Discretion and Personal Liability of Teachers in Relation to Grades and Records. Education, 101(4), 335-340.
The intent of this argumentative research paper, is to take a close look at school systems disciplinary policies and the effect they have on students. While most school systems in the nation have adopted the zero tolerance policies, there are major concerns that specific students could be targeted, and introduced into the criminal justice system based on these disciplinary policies. This research paper is intended to focus on the reform of zero tolerance policies, and minimizing the school to prison pipeline.
This study is about the phenomena of students experiencing a transfer from school straight into juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. Heitzeg (2010, 1) presents how this study attempts to explain how the pipeline emerged with the help of media and youth violence. In addition to media, the process of moving youth toward the pipeline is also due to authority’s tendency to target youth according to racial, social, and economic backgrounds (Heitzeg, 2010). The implementations of zero tolerance policies exhibit a trend among African American and Hispanic/Latino youth. “African-American students are referred for misbehavior that is both less serious and more subjective than white students” (Fowler, 2011, p.17). According to a study done by the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University (2005), “the single greatest predictor of future involvement in the juvenile system is a history of disciplinary referrals at school.”(Fo...
Skiba, R. J., Michael, R. S., Nardo, A. C., & Peterson, R. L. (2002). The color of discipline: Sources of racial and gender disproportionality in administration of school punishment. Urban Review, 34, 317-342.
Skiba, R., Simmons, A., Ritter, S., Kohler, K., Henderson, M., Wu, T. (2006). The context of minority disproportionality: Practitioner perspectives on special education referral. Teacher College Record, 108(7), 1424-1459.
However, zero tolerance policies are not the only cause of this school-to-prison pipeline. The addition of school resource officers also feeds the pipeline. As school resource officers are added to the environment, the number of criminal citations in schools increased dramatically (Shah 14). Students often find themselves being harassed by police officers in the halls for minor offenses (Middleton 1). This also increases the arrest rate in schools and paves a path to the juvenile justice system (“What is the School-To-Prison Pipeline?”). “The very policies that schools adopted to manage behavior and increase achievement are fostering failure and feeding the school-to-prison pipeline” (Wilson 50). The school-to-prison pipeline pushes students, especially African Americans and special needs children, out of schools through suspensions and expulsions leading them down a path to the juvenile justice system, which then fosters a culture of incarceration in the United States. As the pipeline becomes more of a national trend, legislatures and school administrators need to come together to eliminate the effects of the
In the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, Chief Justice Earl Warren said, “In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunities of education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right that must be made available on equal terms.” There is a widespread issue that is currently affecting children across the nation. It’s too often that schools push racial minorities and children with disabilities from the classrooms to the criminal justice system at increased rates for minor offenses, suspensions, and expulsions. According to the article, “The School to
A science teacher in Mississippi asked her students to take a picture with their completed DNA Lego model. John Doe took his picture with a smile and a hand gesture in which his thumb, index, and middle finger was raised. This was enough to earn him an indefinite suspension with a recommendation for expulsion because his school administrators believed he flashed a gang sign although he was simply putting up three fingers to represent his football jersey number. (NPR Isensee, 2014). This kind of criminalization of young people contributes to suspension, dropout, and incarceration, and too often pushes students into what is referred to by many education scholars and activists as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” a term that refers to “the policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems” (ACLU 2013). The School-to-Prison Pipeline is one of the most urgent challenges in education today. This paper will focus on the following circumstances and policies contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline: 1) resource deprived schools, 2) high-stake testing and 3) zero-tolerance discipline policies. However, it is important to note that the school-to-prison pipeline is a broad problem not limited to these three components and has been influenced by historical inequities (segregated education), concentrated poverty, and racial disparities in law enforcement (NAACP, 2005). They have each served to isolate and remove a massive number of people, a disproportionately large percentage of whom are youth of color, from their communities and from participation in civil society (NAACP, 2005). I argue for attention to the school-to-pr...
It is worthy to make a note that most of the students suspended and expelled in American schools are the African Americans who are ill-treated in school thus making their school life problematic. Out of 100% of students in American schools 63% of the students expelled are African Americans. Indeed, Blank et al (2004 p.108) argues that the big gap between African-American expulsion rates in comparison with other races is an indication of racial prejudice that is inherent in the American school system. Educational critics further argue that the American Educational system is particularly oppressive to the African-American child. They argue that most African-American children are expelled out of school because of minor crimes; crimes that would not lead to ex...
Related Posts of "Parent FAQ: Misconduct" Florida Department of Education (2011) Web. 1 Apr. 2011. The. Schwartz, Stuart, and Craig Conley. Human Diversity: A Guide to Understanding.
The aforementioned are example of student trauma, that can lead to further bad behavior and many harshly repeated reprimands targeted toward so-called problem students, for minor infractions that use mean a visit to the principal’s office or staying after
Khadaroo, Teicher. A. “School suspensions: Does racial bias feed the school-to-prison pipeline?” The Christian Science Monitor. March 31, 2013. Web.
According to the most recent data from the Department of Education, preschoolers who are racially diverse are being disciplined at a rate 3 times as great as their white classmates (Rich, 2014). The Department of Education data shows 48 percent of preschool suspensions were of black students who only make up 18% of all students attending preschool (Rich, 2014). This data is deeply disturbing. What could a preschooler possibly do to warrant a suspension?
This week’s class discussed disproportionality. By giving sample statistics of Lower Merion School District that shows disproportionality, I also found statistical data to reflect the same concept. According to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, Black children constitute 18 percent of students, but they account 46 percent of those suspended more than once.