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Factors associated with lack of school discipline
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In the article, “The Impact of School Suspensions and Expulsions on Dropping Out,” Lawrence M. DeRidder (1990) argues, “the courts have held that children who have been suspended or expelled from school still have right to public education” (
The main points DeRidder shares in the article is the characteristic of students being suspended and expelled, alternative opinions for suspensions and expulsions and student rights. The characteristic of suspended and expelled students is a Black male from a poor socioeconomic grouping. Some of the students have a small cognitive ability which may contribute to the negative behaviors exhibited. DeRidder suggests students from an underprivileged socioeconomic group may have difficulty in conforming to the “middle-class standards” for obedience behavior. Instead of suspending and expelling students, schools should have alternative opinions for those students. Meanwhile, instruction ends as soon as the suspension
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Skiba, and Pedro A. Noguera (2010) reports “the gap in achievement across racial and ethnic groups has been a focus of education research for decades, but the disproportionate suspension and expulsion of Black, Latino, and American Indian students has received less attention” (p. 59). The suspension and expulsion of minority students further widens the achievement gap and racial discipline gap when compared to the suspension and expulsion rate of white students. According to Gregory, et. al, “the Children’s Defense Fund (1975) first brought the issue of racial disproportionality to national attention, showing that Black students were two to three times overrepresented in school suspensions compared with enrollment rates in localities across the nation” (p. 59). Therefore, suspensions and expulsion begets low achievement, low self-esteem, not graduating on time and potential
This decision makes it clear the most important thing for a school to do is to protect the students. It also states that the board of education, whose role is to oversee the schools, must make sure that the staff of the schools is protecting those children. This case highlights that long-term abuse can happen in schools if there are not clear policies or, if there are, that there is no one ensuring that those policies are
A substantial amount of educational and psychological research has consistently demonstrated that African American students underperform academically relative to White students. For example, they tend to receive lower grades in school (e.g., Demo & Parker, 1987; Simmons, Brown, Bush, & Blyth, 1978), score lower on standardized tests of intellectual ability (e.g., Bachman, 1970; Herring, 1989; Reyes & Stanic, 1988; Simmons et al., 1978), drop out at higher rates (e.g., American Council on Education, 1990; Steele, 1992), and graduate from college with substantially lower grades than White students (e.g., Nettles, 1988). Such performance gaps can be attributed to any number of factors, such as socioeconomic status, academic preparation, and educational opportunities; however, Steele (1997) pointed out that even when background factors are held constant, subsequent achievement remains lower for minority students. Moreover, much research in this area has focused on how African American students’ lack of motivation and negative attitudes contribute to their inferior academic performance (Ogbu, 1990); yet many Black students often report high educational aspirations (Fordham, 1996; Fine, 1991; Ogbu, 1987, 1990; Hauser & Anderson, 1991), even higher than White students of comparable class background (MacLeod, 1995). What remains certain is the urgent need to explain what accounts for the persistent academic underachievement of Black students.
In Goss v. Lopez, a student sued because an Ohio law allowed a school principal to suspend a student for 10 days or more with only a simple 24-hour notice to parents. The court ruled that this was a violation of a student’s 14th amendment due process clause rights because students were not given a due process hearing. In Dixon v. Alabama, a federal appellate court affirmed same standard in higher education by maintaining that a public college or university cannot expel a student without a hearing.
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.
Bankston III, Carl and Stephen J. Caldas. "Majority African American schools and social injustice: the influence of de facto segregation on academic achievement." Social Forces, Dec. 1996, v75 n2 pp535-556.
Rosenfeld counters this “geography of blame” by sharing his personal experiences within the Harlem community. After spending time with students outside of school, he discovers firsthand that the children are neither without culture nor disadvantaged. Teachers’ common “credos” regarding students (i.e., uncaring or uninvolved parents, lack of interest in learning, lazy and unclean, etc.) are based on unfounded myths used “to reduce them all to a common definition” of what it means to be a black marginalized member of society (Rosenfeld, 1971, p. 50). Therefore, if schools were agents of cultural transmission functioning to produce the larger societal expectations, a deficit, reductionist approach would likely succeed in keeping people academically and (eventually) economically disadvantaged.
The achievement gap is defined as the disparity between the performance groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability and socio-economic status. The achievement gap can be observed through a variety of measures including standardized test scores, grade point averages, drop out rates, college enrollment and completion rates. The Black-White achievement gap is a critical issue in modern society’s education system. Although data surrounding the issue clearly indicates that the racial performance gap exists in areas of standardized tests, graduation rates, dropout rates, and enrollment in continuing education, the causative reasons for the gap are ambiguous—therefore presenting a significant challenge in regard to the most effective way to close the gap. The gap appears before children enter kindergarten and it persists into adulthood (Jencks 1998). Since 1970, the gap has decreased about 40 percent, but has steadily grown since. Theories suggest the Black-White achievement gap is created by a multitude of social, cultural, and economic factors as well as educational opportunities and/or learning experiences. Factors such as biased testing, discrimination by teachers, test anxiety among black students, disparities between blacks and whites in income or family structure, and genetic and cultural differences between blacks and whites have all been evaluated as explanations for the Black-White achievement gap (Farkas 2004). The research that follows will elaborate on these factors as they affect the decline in academic performance of black males—particularly the literacy achievement of black males.
The exhaustion of the long commute to Monroe Elementary School everyday had upset me, the feeling of being powerless overcame my mentality. I constantly thought to myself about the all whites elementary school only seven blocks away, what made them so surprior? I, as a third grader, grew up to the discriminatory profiling. Of course it was nothing new, but I could not comprehend why. Recalling back to Monroe Elementary; the broken ceiling tiles, the wore down floors, and the cracked windows was not an ideal place for any education to take place. It had only proved to me that the segregation of white and black children made us African American students feel inferiority to the white American students.
I mentioned earlier that within my own school, we have a problem with segregation between students that take different classes. While not an official program, my school system does have a practice of tracking students together based on achievement levels. Starting in elementary school students tend to grouped based on their academic ability. Often times you will see students of color and students from low-income families in what are often called the “bottom” classes. The students many times are then stuck in the classes that do not have the same high expectations as the one or two classes of our “top” students. Those “top” classes are often times over represented by the white students as well as students from more affluent families. Going back to Orfield, et al (2010), one way to keep this from happening is by “detracking” students (p 25). Oftentimes students are labeled at a young age and sent on track that will carry on all the way through graduation. Minority students, ELL students and students from low income families generally do not test well at young ages and then are put on track of education that has lower expectations than their peers that are from affluent white families. According to Orfield, et al (2010), schools that use detracking strategies for their students often see increased
I do not believe is right to suspend a student based on race and just because the student acts out is not because they are future criminals. A student usually acts out because they lack attention at home and are seeking attention from an adult. I believe is better to help the child early in age instead later in their life when they start hanging out with the wrong crowd. Another type of student who will act out in a classroom setting would be a student with disabilities because they feel so out of place. As educators we can change the outcome of a student success in their education. The first thing to do would be to stop stereotyping a student by their race. A student success in a classroom setting should not be determine by their race. If a student acts out we should discipline the child the correct way by having small punishments. Suspending the child would only put them behind and they would not learn anything from it. Having the child stay after class and help those with their homework would feel more of a punishment than staying at home. If a child stays at home from suspension than they would feel like it’s a reward because they can’t stand school at a young
Khadaroo, Teicher. A. “School suspensions: Does racial bias feed the school-to-prison pipeline?” The Christian Science Monitor. March 31, 2013. Web.
In conclusion, African American children face unwanted obstacles that prevent them from getting the equal education opportunities that they deserve. These children face problems everyday regarding crime, poverty and the school system not providing the right supplies for them to become effective members of their communities. When these children grow up in the high-poverty areas, they are already being set up as a failure. The time for equal education opportunities may not come due to the lack of funding, poverty levels and the way they are looked at through societies eyes. It is up to the black community to fix what they need to succeed.
Students who are disruptive in class and refused to do their work were sent down to discipline where they received the consequences for their actions. More often than not, in school suspension was the end result. The concept of in school suspension was new to me because it was not something that I had seen when I was growing up.
Stroup, A. L. and L. N. Robins (1972). "Elementary school predictors of high school dropout among black males." Sociology of Education 45(2): 212-222.
School Arguments: 10th Amendment-allowed the school to suspend the kids in fear of endangering other student's health and academic well being