The Importance Of Oppression In Schools

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

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

Black students account nationally for 34% of all suspensions (Mazama). Black students in America are faced with a struggle as they begin to go into school systems. Some students will go into an urban school system and will be surrounded by many minorities and others will attend rural school areas in the south. African American students who live in the south experience a great amount of racism from their peers, their peers parents, teachers, and other school officials. The issue occurs when students of a majority race don't know how to communicate or peacefully get along with students of a minority race. This can be an act of calling a student out of their name or acting violently towards them. Students should not have to worry about whether they are safe at school all because of something they can’t help. Racism needs to be taken out of schools all across the the world. They way we do this is to educate students about black history and how their actions may trigger a student of color.

African Americans are not the only ethnicity group to be singled out with behavior. Racial and ethnic minority students report experiencing low teacher expectations, having less access to educational resources, being placed on lower educational tracks, and being steered toward low-paying employment (Kozol, 1991; Olsen, 2008).This low expectation is causing

Incarceration has negative effects on the education of black students. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, it shows that elementary and high schools receive about 73 percent of their state funding from a discretionary fund, the exact same fund that colleges and universities count on for half of their budgets. However, $9 out of every $10 that support imprisonment come from the same pot of money. With tons of billions of dollars in prison spending annually, states are finding that there is simply less voluntary money available to invest in education, especially in these lean economic times. The school districts that are considered failing schools, which house a majority of minority students, are significantly impacted. Consequently, education systems for black students are designed to continue the school to prison pipeline. These despairing injustices do not end with the education systems, they are also prevalent in the job force.

Everyday students of color are denied their right to a full education due to schools’ harsh disciplinary actions, such as out of school suspension and expulsions. Schools have a responsibility to keep students safe and provide a disciplined learning environment. There is no argument against this, however the methods utilized to provide a safe climate defy this common sense. More specifically, zero tolerance policies, which require students to be punished consistently and severely in a punitive nature. Zero tolerance policies arose in school systems during the 1990s when the justice system was “getting tough” on crime as a tactic to control drug abuse. According the Public Agenda removing students from school is supposed to create a better

It is a form of racism expressed in social and political institutions. Black students are mainly being unfairly judged and receiving unfair treatment for things that white students are doing too. This is proven in the statistics provided by ACLU which is the American Civil Liberties Union which specializes in political issues and stories in the media. ACLU say that black students are suspended and expelled three times more than white students. They go on to say “Students suspended or expelled for a discretionary violation are nearly three times more likely to be in contact with the juvenile justice system the following year¨. It is not justifiable that black students are being discriminated against especially when it will lead to them ending up in prison. The education system is setting them up for failure by doing this. Equally important Matthew Lynch who is an expert on education, equity, and reform says ¨Sadly, over half of black young men who attend urban high schools do not earn a diploma. Of the dropouts, nearly 60 percent will go to prison at some point.¨ It is harrowing to see this happening to black students let alone any student for that matter. These students who drop out are ending up in prison, because it is hard to earn an honest living without a highschool diploma and when the school system is telling them they are criminals instead of trying to help them. The education system is taking wrong steps that is causing this vicious cycle to

This nation has a history of oppressing African Americans, as seen during antebellum slavery and the Jim Crow era, and despite the gains made during the Civil Rights movement, African Americans continue to find themselves under the control of whites. Because students of color have become the prime targets of overly strict policies, generations of African American students have been relegated to an oppressed underclass of people intensely surveilled by law enforcement; suspensions, expulsions, and dropping out directly translate to lower educational attainment and lower socioeconomic status later in life so African Americans are forced into an impoverished underclass that has been created as a means of control.

In Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected, Kimberlé Crenshaw provides vivid examples and statistics on how black girls are often punished more in comparison to students of a different race and/or gender. As little data is collected on how black girls encounter unjust disciplinary actions on a consistent basis, educators, activists, and community members remain unaware about the consequences of these actions(Crenshaw, 2015). Due to these individuals becoming "underinformed", little action is done to improve the educational experience of black women, producing negative impacts amongst academic success (Crenshaw, 2015, p. 8). By understanding and becoming aware of the issues that black women endure, school systems can

The first reading “Unaccounted Foundations: Black Girls, Anti- Black Racism, and Punishment in Schools” by Connie Wun explores the use of punishment in the educational institutions in order to highlight the racial formations theory that states that race is a permanent fixture but its criteria and implications are fluid over time. Although African American students are seen as a minority, they still make up a large percentage of the victims of formal discipline within schools for violent acts like fighting and nonviolent acts like chewing gum in class. This range of punishment creates a justification for punishing both boys and girls of color. This reading reminds me of the educational institution as another peculiar institution that produces

Black girls have more than double of a chance of getting suspended than white girls in each state. In the District of Columbia, 73 percent of females attend school, but 94 percent of them are suspended. They are 17.8 times more likely to be suspended over a white girl (Camera). Evidence says, from Neena Chaudhry, that girls are not getting suspended for their behavior, but for the color of their skin. “Black girls face high and disproportionate suspension rates across the country – and it’s not because they are misbehaving more frequently than other girls,” (Chaudhry), director of education at the women’s law center. This is explaining that people realize the problem that these girls are facing and that it is causing conflict with teachers and the students. Due to this, black girls feel discriminated and feel like they do not belong because of the hate coming from the faculty

Schools where the population of students is predominately African American and/or Latino, educators and administrators perceive a “racial threat,” which has been shown to affect their reactions to problematic student behaviors. The more a school has more of a population of students of color, the higher the likelihood that punitive exclusionary discipline will be used in response to disruptive and problematic student behaviors (Morris, 2012).

Numerous studies have shown that some groups are targeted with suspensions, like minorities, children with low grades, and poor students. In the case of Cindy, a black student from Turners Falls High School, she got into an incident because of a misunderstanding. She thought that two kids had made a racist joke about her, and exploded out in anger. Using the normal methods, she would have been suspended. Nonetheless, after a chat with the mentioned students and an adult, they found out that the students had said nothing racist at all. Yes, sometimes it’s obvious when a student is to be blamed in a situation, but without context, anything can be made seemingly wrong or right. Therefore, suspensions should be changed because they are used

Within Chapter 2 of his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire perceives that an individual’s academic development originates from oppressive material taught within the educational system. Programs designed to diminish the cognition of an individual by repeatedly depositing their authority. A banking concept that navigates a student’s ability to receive, and file information properly. Consequently, subduing the cultural limits of the world to an assembled number and order. Yet, Freire remains hopeful that if civilization can establish a cohesive force through his concept of imploring a problem-posing education.

As long as the school system has been in existence, there have been many cases of discrimination in one form or another. Blocked opportunities for students of a certain race and or in a lower socio-economic group have always existed. Many school officials, including various faculty members, have been responsible for rerouting minority students suggesting less demanding classes with the belief that these students could not handle the more advanced course work. This particular form of discrimination has been labeled tracking. For many years, racial minorities have been battling, and at times succumbing, to this form of discrimination.