OK, we're gonna catch HELL for this but here goes.
Ann Arbor schools are focusing on a racial gap in suspensions handed out to students who do something to get a suspension. Our question is WHY is this statistic even kept? Who keeps 'score'? We're of the opinion if you do something suspension worthy, it shouldn't matter what color you are, go deal with your days off. At that point it's a PERSONAL issue, Jimmy Smith or Susie Jones was suspended for X. We should be worrying how MANY times Jimmy Smith gets suspended NOT whether Jimmy is black, white or green. Are there two check boxes on the suspension form for name AND race?
Here are the numbers:
...black students received more than half of all suspensions handed out in both the 2005-06 school year (54.5 percent) and the 2006-07 school year (55.7 percent). In those years, black students made up less than 15 percent of the district's student body...
But to hear school board President Karen Cross speak it IS important to care about what race a misbehaving kid is (and we think THAT perpetuates stereotypes):
"The numbers don't lie, we've made limited progress."
In WHAT exactly? Telling kids what?
If you do something SO STUPID that the school thinks they NEED to suspend you, your skin color matters not. IF you are suspending them BECAUSE they are black, you have NO PLACE in our school systems, it's that simple.
Flame away...
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7 comments:
You are not going to catch hell from me. I agree 100%.
Sometimes it seems obvious to me that everything is one generation off. 20-25 years ago it may have been necessary to keep track of these statistics. I just don't see its need today.
What I find interesting is that this oasis of equality called A2, and all of it's liberal politics and liberal thinking, prove when releasing data like this that they are much part of the "problem" as anyone. At least to those that believe a problem exists.
I couldn't believe what I was reading to be honest. I felt like they were inventing something to worry about.
Racial inequality is NEVER to be tolerated but seems to be these kids weren't falling under that kind of issue here, they were doing things to PERSONALLY earn time away from school.
I'm sure the lacrosse team at Huron High being suspended for mooning will make up for these discrepancies in short order LOL
Johnny, I'm not going to flame you, but I am going to point out that your oversimplified analysis doesn't do justice to a very complex and extraordinarily important issue.
Stats must be kept because our country has a 200+ year history of discrimination, during most of that time, said discrimination was ubiquitous.
Since the Civil Rights Acts, however, discrimination has gone underground to a significant extent. Racists have been required to use pretexts to discriminate. As pretexts have been discovered, they have gotten more and more sophisticated. So, pretty much everyone with any experience in detecting subtle forms of racism and the use of pretexts to discriminate knows that these stats must be kept, or such racism will go undetected, unremedied and unpunished.
There's a serious achievement gap among schoolkids in this country, among multiple disaggregations of the data. Generally speaking, poor kids do more poorly than wealthy kids in the same classroom. Generally speaking, black kids do worse than white kids in the same classrom.
Since this disparity can readily and easily be attributed to racism, it has been studied for decades, yet only a modest amount of progress has been accomplished in narrowing the gap.
The only way to identify the root causes of achievement gaps is if you track all the root causes of disparities between groups and then follow up with what you find to get to the bottom of these discrepancies. Federal law requires that all sorts of stats be kept for the very reason that discrimination must be ruled out as causes of these disparities. If it is not, the Office of Civil Rights gets involved and assists the school in figuring out what the cause(s) of the problem are.
I think it's nice that you are so trusting, but in my line of work I have learned that discrimination, subtle, intentional and unintentional, happens pretty much every day, everywhere. If we aren't pro-active in tracking it, particularly in our public institutions like schools, we won't even know it's going on.
So, this must be tracked, it must be pored over, and the reasons for disparities must be analyzed, or we will be condoning discrimination by our failure to use the tools at our disposal to detect and remedy this serious problem.
Wanna learn more? Do a Google search for racial achievement gap, and your level of sophistication on this issue will increase by orders of magnitude. And you will understand why keeping this data is not just important, but mandatory for anyone who values our civil rights.
Thanks Getto, great analysis. Yes historically is has been a problem, nobody would ever debate that not from the flat earth society. Yes it should be quantified somehow so we can show we're making strides. It also sounds to me like you're making a behind the scenes case that racists are working in, and in some cases making decisions based on purely race based ideals. THAT is scary. Like I said these people have no place in our schools.
One question I'd have after your excellent points is are we tracking this to weed out the bad egg administrators and teachers who are making decisions based on race or are we simply marking check boxes saying black kids were suspended more than others, let's mark that down?
Have we had ANY cases in the state where data collected has shown ANYONE getting fored from or being suspended over race based decisions? Has ANY action been taken on this OR are we simply still collecting data ad infinitum?
ONE point I'd ask you about, and I do come from a LONG and storied line of teachers in this state, when you say:
"Since this disparity can readily and easily be attributed to racism"
I'm wondering, who are you blaming? Society? the MEA? Teacher Unions? School Boards? And uh, EASILY attributed to racism? Do you mean social standing as racism, meaning poor kids are victims of racism because they are poor and go to worse schools? Would that be racism or classism?
Just curious.
Thanks again for the great points!
A great deal of the suspensions come from a category of offense labeled "insubordination" -- a category that's very subjective.
I don't think anyone is arguing that there are a bunch of racist white teachers suspending a bunch of black kids. It's much more subtle than that.
For instance, when it comes to "insubordination" from our children, my husband and I have different standards and thresholds. What will get them in trouble with me will not get them in trouble with dad, and vice versa. It varies to the point where on a good day with me they can get away with something that I might end up punishing them for on a more difficult day.
I suspect it's the same with teachers and students. Sometimes a student will mouth off and it will result in a suspension, and sometimes it will result in a warning or detention or some lesser punishment. Are the black students being "insubordinate" more often, or do the teachers just have a shorter fuse with black students? Or both?
When you consider that the biggest category of suspensions is "insubordination," a very subjective things, and black students are WAY OVER represented in suspensions, it could be argued that there is something racial going on here -- whether it's intentional or some unintentional consequence of the way people are raised and/or wired. And it should be addressed rather than ignored.
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. This is a societal problem, not one limited to schools. And I'm not blaming anyone. This is predictable phenomena of our country's history. Blaming isn't going to solve the problem, but fighting ignorance will.
I'm not saying the achievement gap is solely or even mostly a result of direct or overt racism. What I'm saying is that racism (both past and present, subtle and overt) is definitely a proven factor, and there is no way to quantify that factor (as well as other proven factors) unless you keep the data and analyze it regularly.
Further complicating the analysis is that some racism is unconscious, not overt or necessarily intended, yet scientific studies show that it exists. See the Clark Doll studies. So, while there are probably some racists in some of our schools, the larger problem is more subtle than that.
With regard to discipline, it is obvious that kids who aren't in school, or who are in school but out of the classroom being disciplined, don't do well. So if you have a racial disparity in discipline, you'd expect that to carry over into the achievement category as well. Again, if you don't keep the stats, you won't know the significance of the connection.
I do know, however, that if 4x the number of black kids get suspended than white ones, that's probably a factor in that particular achievement gap.
Anonymous AND Getto
Thanks again for insightful and intelligent discussion on this.
Insubordination, yes, that COULD very obviously become a 'covert' type of racism like Getto pointed out earlier. I wonder if the authority figure (ie teacher, admin, principal) are in the notes of WHO is supending and why. If we see a teacher who suspends black students for insubordination say 50% more often than white kids, let's not use that info to study behavior of black students, my point from yesterday would be to run the authority figure out.
Question for anyone who knows. Do they keep records as to WHO is suspending for these insubordiantion offenses? As in yes it's most likely the principal who does the actual suspending BUT is there a list of say teachers who refer said kid for suspension for insubordination?
I hope we're keeping records (if we're going to keep records) the TEACHERS are held as accountable for this...
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