Black students face tougher discipline in Chicago and the U.S.
By ROSALIND ROSSI AND ART GOLAB Staff Reporters
March 6, 2012
African American students receive disproportionately harsher discipline than non-minorities in schools nationwide — and especially in Chicago, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday.
Duncan, Chicago’s Schools CEO until 2009, said the “most alarming findings’’ in a new analysis of school equity issues involved “the sad fact’’ that minority students face “much harsher discipline” than non-minorities and “some of the worst discrepancies are in my home town of Chicago.’’
Although African American students represented 45 percent of the Chicago Public School enrollment in 2009-2010, 76 percent of students receiving at least one out-of-school suspension that year were black, new federal data from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights showed.
That means CPS’s African American students were five times as likely to be suspended as their white peers, relative to their presence in the overall student population. That’s the third-highest black-white suspension ratio among 20 big-city districts examined, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of the federal data indicated.
The new data emerged just as students from Voices of Youth in Chicago Education calculated that CPS students lost 306,731 days of school last school year due to out-of-school suspensions. Students said too many CPS schools are too quick to suspend — especially for non-violent incidents — and too lax to talk out problems with students.
In Chicago, disruptive behavior on a bus results in a five-day out-of-school suspension but in Baltimore and Denver, other options are used first, a VOYCE analysis indicated. One CPS student said she was suspended for 10 days in September because she did not wear her uniform and failed to display her student identification at Robeson High School.
CPS’s suspension policy is “too harsh,’’ said another, Victor Alquicira. “They throw around suspensions as if they were nothing.’’
Duncan said that when he was Chicago Schools CEO, he was “troubled’’ by data indicating that a small number of CPS schools were generating a high number of arrests — ”the vast majority for minor or petty things, things that could have been much better handled than by picking up the phone and calling police.’’ Two adjacent schools could have wildly different arrest rates, merely because of the difference in the “adult response’’ to a problem, he said.
Duncan said he tried to implement more peer juries and rewards for positive behavior, but “Chicago, like a lot of districts, has a long way to go.’’ A database similar to that released by his department would have been helpful when he was Chicago Schools CEO, Duncan said.
A CPS spokeswoman said current Chicago Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard is trying to encourage alternatives to out-of-school suspensions, created a position of director of Youth Development and Positive Behavior to attack the problem and is working on revisions to the student disciplinary code.
Some signs of progress are indicated in an expulsion rate that has dropped by 43 percent compared to the same time period last year, said CPS spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler.
Other federal data Monday indicated that nationally, minority students have less access to rigorous high school curricula and are more often taught by lower-paid and less experienced teachers.
“The undeniable truth is that the everyday educational experience for many students of color violates the principle of equity at the heart of the American promise,’’ Duncan said. “It is our collective duty to change that.’’
Suspensions in the 20 largest public school systems
| Size rank | District | Students suspended & student enrollment | White | African-American | Hispanic | Asian/ Pacific Islander | American Indian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | Suspensions | 8% | 46% | 42% | 2% | 1% |
| Enrollment | 14% | 40% | 40% | 15% | 0.4% | ||
| 2 | Los Angeles | Suspensions | 4% | 26% | 67% | 3% | 0.4% |
| Enrollment | 9% | 9% | 75% | 7% | 0.3% | ||
| 3 | Chicago | Suspensions | 3% | 76% | 20% | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| Enrollment | 9% | 45% | 42% | 4% | 0.2% | ||
| 4 | Dade County, Fla. (Miami) | Suspensions | 4% | 50% | 46% | 0.3% | 0.1% |
| Enrollment | 9% | 25% | 65% | 1% | 0.1% | ||
| 5 | Clark County, Nev. (Las Vegas) | Suspensions | 25% | 25% | 45% | 5% | 1% |
| Enrollment | 34% | 14% | 42% | 10% | 1% | ||
| 6 | Broward County, Fla. (Fort Lauderdale) | Suspensions | 17% | 59% | 23% | 1% | 0.3% |
| Enrollment | 28% | 39% | 29% | 4% | 0.3% | ||
| 7 | Houston | Suspensions | 3% | 45% | 51% | 1% | 0.4% |
| Enrollment | 8% | 26% | 63% | 3% | 0.3% | ||
| 8 | Hillsborough County,, Fla. (Tampa) | Suspensions | 25% | 46% | 28% | 1% | 0.2% |
| Enrollment | 44% | 23% | 30% | 3% | 0.3% | ||
| 9 | Fairfax County, Va. (outside Washington D.C.) | Suspensions | 28% | 27% | 31% | 13% | 0.3% |
| Enrollment | 48% | 11% | 20% | 22% | 0.3% | ||
| 10 | Philadelphia | Suspensions | 7% | 77% | 14% | 1% | 0.1% |
| Enrollment | 13% | 62% | 17% | 7% | 0.2% | ||
| 11 | Palm Beach County , Fla. | Suspensions | 20% | 57% | 22% | 1% | 1% |
| Enrollment | 38% | 29% | 29% | 3% | 1% | ||
| 12 | Orange County, Fla. (Orlando) | Suspensions | 16% | 53.7% | 29% | 1% | 0.2% |
| Enrollment | 34% | 28% | 33% | 5 | 0.5% | ||
| 13 | Gwinnett County, Ga. (outside Atlanta) | Suspensions | 16% | 43% | 32% | 4% | 1% |
| Enrollment | 34% | 28% | 26% | 11% | 0.5% | ||
| 14 | Dallas | Suspensions | 3% | 48% | 48% | 0.3% | 0.5% |
| Enrollment | 4% | 25% | 69% | 1% | 0.4% | ||
| 15 | Montgomery County, Md. (outside Washington D.C.) | Suspensions | 17% | 52% | 27% | 5% | 0.1% |
| Enrollment | 38% | 23% | 23% | 17% | 0.3% | ||
| 16 | Wake County, N.C. (Raleigh) | Suspensions | 25% | 57% | 17% | 2% | 0.3% |
| Enrollment | 57% | 24% | 12% | 7% | 0.3% | ||
| 17 | San-Diego | Suspensions | 12% | 24% | 57% | 7% | 0.5% |
| Enrollment | 24% | 11% | 48% | 17% | 0.4% | ||
| 18 | Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C. | Suspensions | 14% | 75% | 10% | 0.5% | 0.5% |
| Enrollment | 33% | 44% | 17% | 5% | 0.4% | ||
| 19 | Prince George’s County, Md. (outside Washington, D.C.) | Suspensions | 2% | 87% | 10% | 1% | 0.4% |
| Enrollment | 4% | 71% | 20% | 3% | 0.4% | ||
| 20 | Duval County, Fla. (Jacksonville) |
Zero tolerance is a major factor in students dropping out of school and plunging into the “school-to-jail” pipeline.
The U.S. Department of Education indicates that more than three million students each year are suspended and nearly 100,000 more are expelled, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The data does not explain why 15% of the nation’s black students in grades K-12 are suspended at least once each year, compared with 4.8% of white students.
Nor does the data scrutinize why students of color are far more likely to be kicked out of school when they possess and use a cell phone compared with their white peers. Almost 33% of first-time black middle school offenders were suspended, compared with 4.5% of white peers. For first-time dress-code violations, 38.3% of black students were suspended, compared to 6.6% of white students. This suggests the need for an Implicit Association Test be developed and administered to all educational personnel to measure unconscious bias.
From forthcoming article entitled: Well Intended Policies and Unintended Outcomes for Disconnected Youth: The Low Hanging Fruit
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So other than lament the problem, what did Arne Duncan do about the
problem while he was the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and, even
more importantly, as Secretary of Education, what is he doing about it
on a national level or is he even qualified to make that assessment?
Thank you so much for this article. Being a parent I will address this first hand. In my experience, racism is the culprit in the Indiana public school system. The discussion of racism in the U.S. educational system is Taboo. No one wants to talk about how white teachers abuse and mistreat Black boys and children of color, especially white female teachers. Black boys are beat down by the dominate culture each and every day. Zero tolerance was just another way to lynch and destroy the minds of our children. Where is the outcry?????????????? As we watch and allow the human rights of children of color be destroyed by the U.S. Goverment.
I am definitely not someone that need to be prodded. In fact, contrary, We are the prod.
It is not from the benevolence with the butcher, the brewer, or baker we expect our dinner, but using their regard to their personal interest.
Greetings!!!!
White folks never intended to bring our people or their slaves here to be over them or to compete with them or their children (public school system).
Why is it that our people love white folks, because they give you nothing but a broken promise always and we continually fall for the same old shit , then we get mad. As if we didn’t know this devil from first hand experience. Marcus Garvey said “A people who accept the ideas of another people becomes a slave”. “Malcom X said “Only a fool would let his enemy educate his children” Dr. Martin Luther King said”I am afraid that our people are intergrating into a burning house”