Out-Of-School Suspensions

(a) With the growing amount of literature uncovering the racial disparities in school disciplinary practices, this study wanted to delve further and explore factors that contribute to the racial disparities of school suspensions specifically concerning Black students, and examined elementary age children and elementary teachers to perhaps determine a genesis of this discrepancy. The student’s overall level of behavior problems, characteristics of the classroom (i.e., overall level of disruption), and the teacher’s ethnicity were considered as potential factors that may contribute to the overrepresentation of Black students.

It was just a big misunderstanding. The teasing had been going on for months, but you tried to hold in your anger as best as possible. When they decided to come up to you again, you were already having a bad day. It felt like you were a ticking time bomb about to explode and each word they said to you was making the timer count down faster. Once you finally blew up, you lost control of yourself because the anger was clouding your mind. It wasn’t all your fault, but all the blame was put on you and the others got away with it. A substantial amount of schools have been using the practice of suspension to punish the student who has misbehaved or violated the schools rules. Suspension hasn’t been showing much positive outcomes on the students who got it. Although some cases are that students are threatening deadly outcomes with their behavior, all the others are simples complications that can be dealt with peacefully and if held correctly, the problem won’t come up again. If schools are quick to suspend anyone even if it’s a small infraction, they are most likely to drop out of school, keep

Racial disparities in school discipline have garnered recent attention in national reports issued by the U.S. Department of Education and Justice (U.S. Department of Education, 2014; Gregory, Hafen, Ruzek, Mikami, Allen, & Pianta, 2016). Suspension rates Black students are two to three times higher than those from other racial and ethnic groups. Various research has documented that Black students remain overrepresented in school discipline sanctions after accounting for their achievement, socioeconomic status, and teacher- and self-reported behavior (Gregory et al, 2016). There is a difference as to the reasons why White students are sent to the office versus Black students. Black students are sent to the office for subjective reasons such as “disrespect” and “perceived threat”, while White students are more than likely to be referred for more objective reasons including, smoking, vandalism, and leaving school without permission. (Gregory, et al, 2016). African Americans and especially African American boys, are more likely to be disciplined and often receive more out-of-school suspensions and expulsions than white students (Todd Rudd, 2014). Suspending students is taking away time from them being in the classroom. Students who receive suspensions, lose instructional time, fall behind on course work, become discouraged, and ultimately drop out…recent research has shown each suspension a student receives can decrease their odds for high graduation by any

Even at their youngest stages of life, African American males are being told that they’re just following a path to jail from birth. Even figures that as a child you’d look up to are telling young black males that they can’t succeed in this world. The vice-principal of the Rosa Parks School when talking about a young African American male said “That one has a jail-cell with his name on it”. Education institutions are the ones who hold the power to decide and construct who has access to opportunities and resources needed to advance in our capitalist society. The system is setting up African Americans for failure from the start. “The racial bias in the punishing systems of the school reflects the practices of the criminal justice system. Black youth are caught up in the net of juvenile justice system at a rate of two to four times that of white youth”. The profiling starts at a young age as well, planning their future for them. In conclusion, Education Institutions are the ones who hold power in this world. They are the building blocks of the future, as they shape young lives. With institutional racism putting some races ahead of others, however, a majority of students are stunted in their path to adulthood, leading to racial issues and divides that would otherwise not

Less than 4% of the total student population enrolled in America’s colleges and universities (one of the smallest subgroups based on race/ethnicity and gender.) According to the Schott Foundation, the graduation rate of Black males in CT is between 51%, whereas White males in CT have an 83% graduation rate—a 32% gap. Moreover, the achievement gap between Black women and Black men is the lowest male-to female ratio among all racial/ethnic subgroups. (Strayhorn 1). The disproportionate and devastating failure of Black males in the educational system has further ramifications in our social system as black males are over-represented in the criminal justice system: “African-American males represent approximately 8.6 percent of the nation’s K-12 public school enrollment but make up about 60 percent of all incarcerated youth” (Smith 2005). In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the academic crisis of adolescent black males, one must examine the research findings surrounding the Black-White achievement gap, black male standardized test scores, black male literacy achievement, and the socio-cultural achievement barriers that obscure black males’ self-perception of themselves as readers. “According to many standardized assessments, educators in the U.S.

Out of school suspensions (OSS) are often enforced with the assumption that students receiving the suspension are less likely to repeat the problem behavior in the future. However, this has been proven to be false. Suspending a student for engaging in a certain behavior does not in fact serve as a deterrent from the behavior but as a deterrent from attending school instead. In actuality, receiving just a single suspension can increase the probability of a student experiencing academic failure, school dropout, and involvement in the juvenile justice system. Knowing this, some educators still believe that for many students, suspension can serve as an effective lesson. One of the greatest concerns that educators and administrators face is the matter of classroom management. It is part of their job to ensure a safe, productive and supportive classroom allowing students to learn and grow to their greatest potential. Though there are several strategies gauged towards managing a classroom, the most severe offences often lead to either in or out of school suspension. Some of the largest concerns faced with out of school suspensions is that they are often ineptly applied, used unfairly against students of color and seemingly ineffective at producing better behavior. Also known as exclusionary discipline, the majority of offenses that led to OSS have not been centered around violence but instead emphasised issues of classroom insubordination and defiance. In some rather extreme cases

While the Civil Rights Movement is considered a success, there is still racism in the United States today, in which blacks are still viewed as overly aggressive and overtly dangerous compared to whites. The racism we are familiar with today is called “institutional racism” and is not only shown in workplaces, but in schools and courtrooms. Institutional racism is defined as a pattern of social institutions who give negative treatment to a group of people based on race. To elaborate on institutional racism, starting with pre-school, black children make up only 18 percent of the pre-school population, but make up almost half of out of school suspensions. In K-12 black children are three times as likely to be suspended than white children. Now moving to the court system, black children make up nearly 60 percent of children in prison and are more likely to be sentenced as adults than white children. These statistics show that black’s, even black children, are more likely to be viewed as dangerous and subject to worse sentences.

Systematic racism within education Institutions, such as the lack of adequate funding as well as subtle discrimination, continues to be the root of the problem that plagues this nation. Even though segregation was abolished in 1964, the lingering effects that remain are significant and cannot be passively mended. Although it is tempting to think that this prejudice is caused by a select few and not the many, it is clear that this problem holds more depth. Recent studies conducted by the National Education Studies (NEA) have proven that even in school’s African American students are often times targeted and punished at a significantly higher rate when compared to their white peers. The study states “Black students make up almost 40 percent of all school expulsions [in the] nation, and more than two thirds of students referred to police from schools are either black or Hispanic” (Blacks: Education Issues). This study conducted by the Department of Education, cabinet-level department of the United States

Today's education is often viewed as failing in its goal of educating students, especially those students characterized as minorities, including African American, Hispanic, and Appalachian students (Quiroz, 1999). Among the minority groups mentioned, African American males are affected most adversely. Research has shown that when Black male students are compared to other students by gender and race they consistently rank lowest in academic achievement (Ogbu, 2003), have the worst attendance record (Voelkle, 1999), are suspended and expelled the most often (Raffaele Mendez, 2003; Staples, 1982), are most likely to drop out of school, and most often fail to graduate from high school or to earn a GED (Pinkney, 2000; Roderick, 2003).

The article digs deeper into the problem of incarceration and the decreasing concentration in school by African American students, which has become a problem in the attainment of education in the U.S. There is a gap in the number of whites graduating at the end of schooling and the Blacks with the dropout increasing each

“Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students.” (Steven Hsieh, 2014) Until now, we are still finding unequal treatment from school in American Society from different aspects, such as school discipline, early learning, college readiness and teacher equity. However, education is more than learning from books. Education enables individuals potential to utilize human mind and open doors of opportunities to obtain knowledge. But the US educational system doesn’t serve the majority of children properly and gaps remain between white and black students. What’s more, nowadays, a lot of schools only treat education as a curriculum and test scores; ignoring the stimulus of curiosity. Therefore, “Between the World and Me” is a book written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who weaves his own personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America. In this book, Coates writes about education and pleasures of his own educational experience in Howard University. Although bad education hides the truth and restricts students’ ideas, education also contains pleasures, which broaden people’s mind, help people build their own thoughts, and prevent people from prison. As a result, there are more pleasures in American education that positively impact on black body than dangers.

Additionally, and perhaps more compelling, African American males, who constitute 6% of the general population, account for approximately 40% of the prison population (National Alliance, 2004), (Sago, S. L., 2011). School suspension in the public schools has become a national concern. Suspension in the schools system is consistently ranked as the number one problem by faculty and staff and parents today. For many disciplinary problem students, being separated from the school environment is a reward rather than a punishment. As a result, there is no motivation for not repeating the infraction. All the student has to do to get back into school is to stay away the designated period of time. Thus, sending the student home solves the immediate problem by removing the offender from the school, but suspension without improving behavior is an exercise in futility. The student returns to school no less troubled than before; therefore, it behooves educators to find a better way to deal with the problem. (Patton, A. S., 1990). Therefore, in order for structure to exist in schools, discipline policies are created such as in school suspension, corporal punishment, and then out of school suspension. Although school systems recognize the necessity of having effective discipline policies, a universal discipline policy does not exist. Noguera (2003) stated that a commonly used discipline policy is one which punishes the students with the “greatest academic, social, economic, and emotional needs”(p.

Cyber bullying is a form of bullying that takes place with the utilization of electronics and is one of the leading problems in high schools. The majority of high schools uses suspension as a form of punishment for cyber bullying. The high school students who commit the crime of cyber bullying should not be suspended from school due to suspension not being an effective punishment, the schools are able to provide refined punishments, and cyber bullies are free to further bully their victims.

The most frequently used discipline practice amongst schools in America, is out of school suspension (Lee, Cornell, Gregory, & Xitao, 2011). Suspension is used as a consequence to correct a student’s actions or behavior on school ground. Periodically, this is an effective approach depending on the student’s mindset about their education. Socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and the environment the students are raised in also tends to play a role in the student’s behavior. Based on where an adolescent is raised can be a critical factor because of the impact it can have on their achievement in school. The dropout rates for urban students tend to be higher than students living in rural areas. Suspension can lead to negative academic outcomes for students individually.

American public schools currently instruct an estimated 50 million students. During the 2011-12 school year, 3.5 million students were suspended in-school and another 3.45 million students have been suspended out-of-school. According to the Department of Education, 130,000 students were expelled over the course of the 2011-12 school year. Among those expelled include students with disabilities and students of color. The disproportionate impact suspension and expulsion practices have on students of color are resulting in devastating consequences. According to the Civil Rights Data Collection 2016, African-American students were suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than white students. Furthermore, students with disabilities are twice as likely to receive an out-of-school suspension as their non-disabled peers. Because of the vast disparities between students of color and their white peers, educators need to re-examine the discipline practices to ensure equitable discipline for all students. By reevaluating current disciplinary practices, administrators can reduce the amount of dropouts and involvement with the juvenile justice system.