School discipline by race, gender and sexual orientation have placed large numbers of students at risk for short- and long-term negative outcomes.
The dividing lines of racial inequalities can be seen in the news media on a regular basis with the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice. These events remind the public that differing views about racial inequality can have deadly consequences.
The negative consequences of unequal punishment can be extreme. In a study conducted by the Discipline Disparities Research-to-Practice Collaborative, researchers found that students being transferred more often to different schools through suspensions and expulsions correlates with the number of students “vanish[ing] from graduation stages and fill[ing] the pipeline to prison,”
Racial disparities in punishment are not new. They are the result of entrenched inequalities in the history of America.
“The ravages of slavery and Jim Crow, forced migration, and policies that enforced unequal treatment placed African Americans and most people of color at an economic and social disadvantage,” the report found.
R.M. Blank from American Economic Review said, “For nearly a century after the Civil War, laws and practices enforcing inferior schools for Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and Mexican Americans and significantly better educational access, housing and jobs for Whites led to economic and social cumulative advantage for Whites and growing disadvantage for people of color.”
Despite the pathway created by the landmark decision of Brown vs. Board of Education on desegregating schools, governmental policies and actions subsequently have led to reinforced segregation of schools through housing policies.
The Children’s Defense Fund noted that “African American and Hispanic students are three times as likely as White students to be born into poverty, have less adequate access to health care, and tend to attend schools with adequate physical facilities, and less highly qualified and trained teachers.”
Governmental policies that create racial disparities in education are compounded by the presence of police officers at predominantly minority schools who punish these students more harshly.
“Research also shows that the increased presence of ” ‘school resource officers” in such stressed, low-resource settings often increases the likelihood that young Black people are not just suspended, but ejected into the justice system through school arrest, particularly for subjective offenses such as disorderly conduct,” the Journal of Criminal Justice states.
The report also found that racial issues will be compounded when school officials ignore the issue of race.
“A colorblind perspective suggests that maybe we shouldn’t talk about it – that discussions about race are extraneous, or that those seeking to discuss race in, e.g., school discipline are ‘playing the race card,’” the report states.
Professor of law Neil Gotanda suggests that the “color blind stance is self-contradictory.” “The assertion that one does not “see color” actually requires considering race in society before rejecting its relevance.”
In sum, as Bryan Stevenson, director of Equal Justice Initiative said, “In order to fix a problem, we must get proximate with the issue, we have to acknowledge the problem exists.”
The study concludes with seven recommendations for educators to reduce racial discipline disparities by using alternatives other than suspension and expulsion as primary forms of punishment. Those recommendations follow:
Encourage educators to Form supportive relationships to improve interactions between teachers and students.
Engage in academic rigor by giving engaging instructions, combined with support for meeting goals and expectations with students.
Informing educators of culturally relevant and responsive instructions for creating safe and respectful classrooms.
Maintaining bias-free classrooms and respectful school environments by adhering to a uniform standard of treatment of all students.
Use new approaches to discipline by offering restorative practice training to all staff in problem solving and in identifying contributors to conflict as a way of reducing the discipline gap.
Recognizing student and family voices, research shows that discipline benefits greatly by reaching out to parents and students to understand their concerns.
Lastly, reintegrating students after conflict or after long-term absences due to suspension, expulsion or detention by involving collaboration of all stakeholders in the community, reducing the likelihood of repeated offenses.
The report was conducted by Prudence L. Carter, Ph.D. professor of Sociology at Stanford; Russell J. Skiba, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology at Indiana University; Mariella I. Arrendondo, Ph.D. Associate director of the Equity Project; Mica Pollock, Ph.D. Professor of Educations Studies at University of California, San Diego.