Zero Tolerance and School Discipline

California Endowment Wants to “Change the Narrative” for Sons and Brothers – by Matthew Fleischer

SONS AND BROTHERS

Out of every 100 Black  Boys, 33 Will Go To Prison, the California “Sons and Brothers” Program Aims to Change That

by Matthew Fleischer


“Christian” was in middle school when the bullying began.
Before school, during, after — it didn’t matter. He had a target on his back.*

“I was getting bullied everyday,” he says. “I used to show up late so that those kids would already be in class by the time I got there. But most of the time it didn’t matter.”

So he stayed home. His grades plummeted. His immigrant parents were too busy struggling to support the family to keep close tabs on him.

Things got worse before they got better.

“I started hanging out with some people I shouldn’t have. Some gang members. I didn’t join. But I was definitely associated with them. I needed protection.”

According to violence prevention experts, needing protection is one of the prime reasons kids take a first step toward gangs.

Christian started getting into trouble. He didn’t sell drugs. But he learned the trade – and he was captivated by the easy money.

“My family had no money. They were working all the time. I thought I might be able to help.”

Prime reason number two.

When he went to school, Christian started acting up. He adopted the attitude of the gang members he was hanging out with. Predictably, he was suspended. He didn’t feel good about it, but it was better than being bullied.

“I knew what I was doing was wrong. But you can’t just leave a gang. They would be like, ‘What, you needed us for protection and now you’re gone?’ That wouldn’t go over too well.”

And so he stayed nominally with the gang and tried to stay out of trouble.

Early in his freshman year at Manual Arts High School in South LA, however, Christian finally figured out a way out of both of his competing problems.. Encouraged by one of his teachers, he began staying long hours after school catching up on his work. He got involved in after school activities – football, the debate club, the robotics club to name just a few. Slowly and delicately, he extracted himself from gang life and put his full efforts into his academics.

Now a 17-year-old senior at Manual Arts, Christian is well on his way to college.

The story of his turnaround is heartening. But, sadly, when it comes to the impact of school suspensions, his tale is an outlier.

According to statistics compiled by the California Endowment, receiving even a single suspension doubles a student’s chances of dropping out. After schools rushed to embrace “zero tolerance” policies in the wake of the April, 1999 Columbine shooting, suspension is still the default form of discipline in most K-12 schools across California and beyond.

In 2006, LAUSD students lost 74,765 days of school time due to suspensions. With all the growing attention to the harm caused to students’ academic outcomes by an overuse of suspensions, the number sank to 26,286 by 2011, but was still large enough to have potentially ruinous effects on thousands of kids –particularly boys of color. (Studies show that African-American boys were 30 times more likely to be suspended than white girls under the strict post-Columbine policies, mostly for discretional non-drug, non-violent offenses. )

Statistics like that one have caused serious reflection among policy makers and education advocates in California, and the issue of suspensions in particular has become paramount.

Nearly 15 years after Columbine, LAUSD and other school districts across California are trying to undo the damage caused by their over active suspension regimes.

Last week, in the gymnasium of Manual Arts, with Christian and other students in attendance, the California Endowment announced a $50 million grant to help these schools across California succeed. Launched under the banner “Sons & Brothers Across California,” the grant will be targeted towards improving the academic fortunes of boys of color by ending unjust suspensions.

Charles Fields, regional program manager for the California Endowment, says the decision to target boys was based on years of collected data.

“When we look at the data, those who are most disconnected from health services, who are the victims or perpetrators of violence, who are incarcerated at highest rate, are black, Latino, Southeast Asian and Native American boys,” says Fields. “If you start with those who are most impacted, there will be a ripple impact for other populations.”

Over 70-percent of all Californians under age 25 are persons of color, according to the 2010 Census. Given those numbers, California Endowment President and CEO Robert Ross, speaking at the Manual Arts press conference, framed his organization’s focus as both a moral imperative, but also as a crucial management decision. “Strategically, we as a state cannot afford to lose this human capital.”

The strategy for ending suspensions, and thereby improving the academic chances for boys of color, isn’t simply about reworking school discipline procedures – although that is essential. Instead, real solutions to behavior issues in secondary school, require a close look upstream to find out how kids are faring academically and emotionally in elementary school.

“A lot of problems we see later in life, we can catch much earlier,” says Fields. “There are warning signs. Folks who are incarcerated generally didn’t graduate high school. They have trouble reading. These are markers you can see when people are younger — pivotal moments in a young person’s trajectory. We as a community need to be mindful of these pivotal movements. 68 percent of black and Latino boys in California are not at reading proficiency by 3rd grade. That is a pivotal time when students transition from learning to read to reading to learn.”

Improving that reading proficiency in early education, the thinking goes, will prevent acting out in middle school, high school and beyond.

Of course, as Christian’s story demonstrates, there are other factors in play: bullying, family issues, violence or trauma experienced in the home or the community, and even simple hunger can cause students to lose their educational focus and slip through the cracks. Acting out in school is often a manifestation of these social/emotional/economic issues, says Fields, which is why suspensions are so counterproductive. They address the symptom, not the cause.

“When we see students getting suspended two or three times, that’s a call for help. They are either getting bullied, walking through gang zones, not getting enough food. They may need mental health support. At that point, where a young person is acting out, we need to figure out, how do we connect them to a mentor or connect their family to social services. Kids who graduate generally don’t end up in prison. So if our schools and community can respond to these students’ needs at these pivotal moments in their lives, we can help end the school-to-prison pipeline we see so regularly.”

California Endowment president Ross admitted during his presser that $50 million is a “drop in the bucket” towards what it will ultimately take to be successful in shifting the discipline culture of California’s schools. But that sum is enough to start a conversation about California’s future – and what it will look like if no action is taken.

“If you walk into a nursery at a hospital and see 100 black male babies, as of now, 33 will wind up in prison. We can’t have that…What the Trayvon Martin event told us is that if you’re black or you’re brown, and you’re male… You’re a threat, you’re a menace, you’re a problem. What I’m so proud of is to see so many folks coming together around a new narrative. The new narrative is, you are loved, you are needed you are valued and you are cherished. We need you to move this nation forward. It’s that change in narrative that’s going to fix this. It’s not the $50 million.”

*”Christian’s” name has been changed.

10 Comments

  • Celeste this is the third boo hoo story recently. First the sheriff’s dogs bite too many blacks and browns, then Pasadena PD arrests too many black/brown teens and now too many black and browns are given a suspension. Obviously this must be an agenda of yours as out of all the articles you could publish or link to you chose these.

  • Check at the top of the website…stories about justice and injustice. Mainly, it’s justice when hard working cops go to jail and injustice when anyone else does…at least according to this place.

  • EDITOR’S NOTE:

    TomV,

    A reasonable question. (I know you didn’t phrase it as a question, but I’m going to assume that’s what you meant.)

    Here’s WLA’s general point of view. The question of whether or not there is bias in the criminal justice system is an issue that’s in the news a lot lately, and is the subject of much research, some of those studies better than others. As we are a criminal justice news site and we approach that news through a social justice lens, these are appropriate topics for us to note, discuss and report.

    In the case of Merrick Bobb’s most recent allegations, we were merely reporting on what he reported, as it was news. We neither agreed nor disagreed with it. As it turned out, it sparked an interesting discussion in the comments section, which I personally found valuable. (So I thank everyone for that.)

    As for the Pasadena story, in this case we were just pointing to the news story. We took no position on it. (My personal position is that it likely needs more examination before people start shouting about profiling.)

    NOW THIS BRINGS US TO TODAY’S STORY. Unlike the other two, this story by Matt Fleischer is our own reporting. Of course, we did no research of our own in this instance, and are only reporting on the California Endowment event. But we have looked at a plethora of information on the patterns of discipline in public schools in the past, so we felt comfortable elucidating the issues on which the event focused.

    More than a decade ago, I did a six month investigation for a national magazine on how black boys were faring in elementary schools around the country. I was stunned at what I found. Really stunned. Since that time, there has been much research, the best of it carefully controlled for other contributing factors. The situation should be of concern to all of us.

    (And, by the way, some of the most interesting research on the topic in the last year or so comes out of Texas, and was backed by the politically conservative Right On Crime people.)

    So, do we think there is an unintentional bias in the way kids are disciplined in American public schools? We don’t think so, we know so. To pretend otherwise is to be unaware of the facts.

    But it’s not that simple, of course. It’s not just the schools, it’s what’s going on at home, in the community, and is mitigated by a host of other influences that affect how a kid grows up, and whether he or she thrives or doesn’t.

    This is neither a liberal or conservative issue. These are our children. It is in our best interest that we do whatever will best help them succeed, and not wind up in correctional institutions on the taxpayer’s dime.

    Long answer for a short question, but there you have it. Thanks for bringing up the topic. (I mean that sincerely.)

    C.

    PS: And while we’re on the topic…

    Dear Surprised. how right you are with your pithy observation! The reason we have devoted so many insanely long working hours reporting on, oh, I don’t know, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is simply because we think it’s positively swell when hard working cops go to jail. (And we also really, really like it when criminals run free.)

    Heck, you got us! (Insert visual of editor rolling eyes, then going to make another pot of very strong coffee.)

  • Well said Celeste. Looks like you can add two more to your list of bloggers
    who have lost their lunch money to you. Keep up the good work. I’m sure the Department will do something shortly requiring your attention!

  • Suspensions should never be the answer, keeping children in school and in activities and sports under the supervision of caring adults is imperative if we want to reduce crime, prisons population and have a functioning society.

    Some common alternatives include:
    > in-school suspension (more structured class with less freedom)
    > school service (assisting custodial staff with after school clean-up, lunch clean-up, etc)
    > Saturday parent supervision
    > community service
    > restitution (used for breakage and vandalism)
    > loss of privileges (like lunch, recess, social time, etc)
    > detention (before or after school)
    > mentoring (with a teacher, counselor, or other staff member before or after school)

    THE OTHER ELEPHANT IS AT HOME
    Just as fatherless male teenage elephants often go rogue becoming renegades without direction, even killing other animals including rhino’s without any warning. Children in father-absent homes are twice as likely to end up in jail. Sixty three percent of youth who commit suicide come from father-absent homes. Seventy one percent of high school dropouts come from father-absent homes. Nearly 75 percent of children raised in homes without fathers will experience poverty before the age of eleven, compared to 20% of those raised in two-parent homes.

    Three-quarters of the teen rapists in our prisons and two-thirds of the teen murderers in our prisons are fatherless young men.

    School Suspensions, just make children school-less, mentor-less as well as fatherless.

  • A really unbiased report would have taken the time to speak to children in classrooms where suspensions occurred. Do this away from school so no peer pressure and see if it is now easier for them to learn without the disruptions. I also wonder how you call the story your reporting and then admit you did no research? How is that reporting?

  • Anticipating you or someone else will say the Times publishes AP or other wire stories all the time. That’s true but right below the headline they list the source and they don’t claim it was their reporting

  • LAST EDITOR’S NOTE ON THIS TOPIC:

    TomV:

    Matt did plenty of reporting on this news story. AND Matt is presently researching a lengthy article that looks deeply into the issue of school discipline and suspensions through the lens of a single LAUSD school, its principal and its students. WLA will publish it later this year or in early 2014.

    Please look up the definitions of those two different verbs. (report & research)

    Okay, I’m done being journalism teacher. You’re on your own.

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