The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

“We have begun to criminalize behavior that is typical,”

The article is about the growing rate of Black youths who are being disciplined in school. Let’s rewind to the beginning of the article.

Student suspensions, expulsions soar

Typical behavior by Maryland youths being ‘criminalized,’ UM researcher says

School suspensions and expulsions have risen significantly in Maryland, with African-Americans, boys and special education students more likely to be disciplined, a University of Maryland researcher said yesterday.

Peter Leone criticized the rising suspension rates, saying students who are suspended many times are more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system.

“When kids are suspended from school, what do you think they are doing?” Leone said. Students are more likely to get into trouble when they are left at home alone than when they are in school, Leone said at a forum sponsored by the Open Society Institute, a nonprofit that has funded projects in Baltimore to address urban problems.

[SNIP]

“The odds that an African-American student will be suspended is two and a half times the odds of a white student being suspended,” Leone said.

Leone, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, has worked with colleagues over the past several years to analyze suspensions and expulsions.

Suspensions have risen across the nation, largely because of zero-tolerance policies aimed at punishing students who bring weapons and drugs to school. But weapons violations account for a small portion of the suspensions each year, Leone said, and the policies have spread to many other acts of misbehavior.

[SNIP]

In Maryland each year, dozens of kindergartners are suspended, and Leone said that raises questions about what educators hope to teach children at that age.

“We have begun to criminalize behavior that is typical,” he said. (more…)

Why are these kids getting suspended? Unfortunately the article doesn’t provide that type of information.

I did a search under “Suspensions, African-Americans” and came up with the following article that was written back in 2004 regarding the suspension issue in Chicago Public Schools.

“Elementary schools are cracking down on discipline problems by suspending a record number of students, most of them African American, a Catalyst analysis found. Schools say more resources and parental support are needed to handle unruly students.”

Last year, the staff and local school council at McNair Elementary in Austin got fed up with student misbehavior—especially fighting, which McNair and other schools say is their biggest discipline problem.

McNair hired a full-time disciplinarian and told teachers to wear business attire and enforce rules without yelling. And the school adopted a “zero tolerance” policy toward fighting, which now results in immediate suspension.

The fights usually stem from petty arguments over “simple, childish, adolescent things—‘He took my book-bag, he took my pencil,’” says James Sellars, a parent and local school council member who blames poor parenting for much of the problem.

Suspensions are an unfortunate necessity, Sellars says. “Zero tolerance may seem harsh, but what is our other alternative?”

The same article later brings up a very interesting point–

“…many teachers are now facing extraordinary classroom stress, such as overage students who have been retained multiple times.”

[SNIP]

Overage retained students are a part of the problem the system doesn’t want to face, the principal says, agreeing with Radner. “When you have students who are in the wrong chronological placement, they feel intimidated academically. [Misbehaving] becomes a way of getting some sense of power,” the principal says.

Recently, the school briefly enrolled a 15-year-old 6th-grader who had been retained in 4th-grade for four years. “I appealed to the board and I got him out,” she says. “He doesn’t go to school at all. He sells drugs.”

A good friend of mine who works in the public school system recently told me a story where she dealt with this first hand. She noticed how the teachers (many of whom were White) were very quick on the draw in their discipline of a 18 year old who just enrolled into the school from an urban school system. While she believes that the boy was at fault for his bad attitude (I believe it was over a baseball hat being confiscated), she also believes that the teachers could have talked to him in a more respectful manner while at the same time upholding the school policy on wearing hats in class.

But again, this scenario sounds plausible for an inner-city kid with a disciplinary record going into predominately-White school. Rising suspension within inner-city schools is an issue all to itself.

Again, back to the article –

Both school personnel and experts bemoan many parents’ poor disciplinary skills. “We need parenting programs at the primary and preschool grades, to give parents a heads-up that it is important to be consistent with discipline and to reward good behavior,” says Robert Deckinga, principal of Von Humboldt Elementary in West Town.

“We have to be more forceful with parents to make sure they instill in their child just a simple discipline code,” says Sellars, the McNair parent and LSC member. (more…)

When parents do not pull their weight for their children, it forces the school to make adjustments like social promotion. Also, because teachers are forced to put up with disruptive students, naturally they will demand better pay for responsibilities beyond the job description.

While the comment “…behavior that is typical” is a haunting one, one has to ask “Why is it typical?” and go from there.