Durango School District 9-R got a good grade of its own Friday with the release of a report showing that over the last three school years, the district has sharply reduced the number of students suspended, expelled or turned over to law enforcement. That is welcome progress.
The report, a product of the Denver-based group Padres & Jovenes Unidos (Parents & Youth United), stemmed from 2012 legislation called the Smart School Discipline Law. The aim of it is to achieve exactly the kind of reductions demonstrated by 9-R and with that to break what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
The ACLU says that phrase refers to “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.” As examples, it cites a 2005 study that showed the number of suspensions rose from 1.7 million in 1974 to 3.1 million in 2000, and points out that 68 percent of all men in state and federal prisons lack high school diplomas.
It also suggests that No Child Left Behind and other test-based accountability efforts could play a role by giving schools an incentive to boost test scores by pushing low-performing students or allowing them to drop out. Students who have been suspended, expelled or dropped out then often have no supervision, nothing productive to do and are more likely to get into trouble.
Other factors are also at play. The ACLU also blames zero-tolerance policies – an example being suspending a student for possessing nail clippers – as well as the increased reliance on the police to enforce discipline. The group says that has led to an increase in the number of school-based arrests, “the majority of which are for nonviolent offenses, such as disruptive behavior.”
The numbers also show strong racial disparities. Statewide, black students are four times as likely as whites to be suspended, expelled or handed over to the cops. Native Americans and Hispanics are about twice as likely as whites to face one of those disciplinary measures.
In District 9-R, a minority student was 23 percent more likely to face punishment as a non-minority. That is well below the state average – and improving.
In fact, 9-R improved across the board. In the three years measured, 9-R suspensions were reduced by 37 percent overall and by more than 52 percent among minorities. Expulsions dropped more than 45 percent overall and by 87 percent among students of color. Episodes involving calls to police officers fell more than 18 percent overall and for minorities almost 90 percent.
That is real progress and good work. There are, of course, times when students must be disciplined. But well-trained teachers and administrators do not often need to turn first to having students suspended, expelled or arrested. Suspensions should be infrequent and expulsions or arrests should be vanishingly rare.
Learning benefits from good order, but students who have been kicked out learn nothing – or at least nothing good. Jailing a child is as likely to teach brutality or criminality as the life skills schools are meant to impart.
As District 9-R Superintendent Dan Snowberger told the Herald, “When the only option you have is to suspend or expel, there is very little room for growth by students.”
He is right, of course, and, from the look of things, on track as well. Good.
