CONNECT
Police, Suspensions in Schools Need Reform, New Report Urges
iWatch News / News Analysis
Published: Friday 25 May 2012
“The Los Angele school district has already adopted what’s called “positive behavioral support” as an alternative to out-of-school suspension.”
When it comes to student discipline, suspending kids and a heavy police presence in schools are policies that are doing more harm than good, according to a new report on three especially troubled California districts.
The report released Thursday by University of California scholars and Human Impact Partners is an exhaustive profile of students in South Los Angeles, Oakland and the agribusiness hub of Salinas in Central California. All these communities have high levels of family poverty, high rates of student suspension and high dropout rates. Oakland-based Human Impact Partners reviews data and conducts on-the-ground interviews to assess the effects that public policies have on equity and health in communities.
The report was funded by the California Endowment. The Center for Public Integrity also receives some support from the Endowment.
The Los Angele school district has already adopted what’s called “positive behavioral support” as an alternative to out-of-school suspension. But researchers found that some L.A. schools are still failing to use the method. As a result, students are still being suspended and losing hundreds of days of school time. The report delves into the high rate of suspensions for “willful defiance,” and the serious discipline challenges the schools face.
The researchers also touch on Los Angeles’ school police, the largest school police force in the nation. They recommend that district police officers, sheriff’s deputies and city police “dedicate a meaningful amount of their professional development over the next three years” to learning about positive behavioral support as “an alternative intervention.”
The Center for Public Integrity recently obtained and analyzed records of school police citations in Los Angeles, which are heavily concentrated in low-income schools. More than 40 percent of the tickets, many of them for scuffles and disturbing the peace, were issued to kids 14 and younger.
In Salinas, a heavily Mexican immigrant community, researchers examined the city’s gang problem and efforts to reach younger students and deter them from getting into violent activity. The homicide rate in Salinas is about four times the national rate, researchers noted. Educators have instituted pilot programs in “restorative justice” to get students to talk through and resolve disputes rather than schools relying on suspension to try to reform them.
The report describes restorative-justice programs now being used in the Oakland Unified School District. The district had about twice the state’s dropout rate of 17 percent in 2010. Students told researchers getting suspended was a chance not to reform behavior, but to “get high” and “steal stuff” and play videogames.
The Oakland district has other problems.
Last week, the district was informed that a federal grand jury and the FBI are investigating its school police force. Media reports say two incidents are the focus of the probe. One involves the former schools police chief, who resigned in August after admitting to a drunken verbal outburst laced with alleged racist remarks. The other incident is an officer-involved shooting of a 20-year-old non-student.
Another report released this month that scrutinizes Oakland looks specifically at suspensions of black male students in the district. Oakland is home to one of California’s larger African-American communities. The report by the Urban Strategies Center offers suggestions for how to respond to data showing that black male students, 17 percent of enrollment in in the district in 2010, were 42 percent of all students suspended.
Reprinted by permission from iWatch News
2 comments on "Police, Suspensions in Schools Need Reform, New Report Urges"
May 27, 2012 10:36am
Theo, good points in your comments, but it just wouldn't work in Oakland. How do you create responsibility for the student to attend class when they consider jail time to be an enhancement to their social status. They consider knowledge as "acting white". These students are basically illiterate and they rebel against any authority. Such is the culture where suspension means they have time to "get high" and hang. There is no defense against willful defiance. I don't know what the answer is, but the problem is endemic in the Oakland school system. the problem won't be fixed by throwing money at them.
May 25, 2012 3:14pm
We must always ensure that Education is kept Public and never only private. The biggest "theft" by the 1 percent has been the primary source of creating wealth, which is Education or Knowledge. It is my opinion that the Privation of Education is a plan that the “Rich and Powerful” 1.0% have to maintaining Class separation. Privation of Education would lead in time to a point where only the “Rich and Powerful” could afford to send their children to the Private schools. I mean they want to do this at every level of the Educational System. Always remember that a Private Company’s primary goal is to make a Profit, therefore the education of a child in a private school is secondary to the profit.
Many of the advances that have propelled our High-Tech Economy in recent decades grew directly out of research programs financed and, often, collaboratively developed, by the Federal Government and paid for by the taxpayer. Then our Greedy and Corrupt Politicians gave the patents for these High Tech developments to the "Rich and Powerful Corporations, Companies, Institutions and Organizations that contribute to their Campaign Funds."
I would create the following Financial Incentive Program to be run and administered by the Federal Government to encourage the continued Education of the students in this country. We need More Scientist and Math Majors. I propose that we directly link Federal Financial Funding for College and the Interest Rates paid to the students GPA which they maintain. This should encourage students in Middle School and High School to work harder to achieve better Grade Point Averages. In my Program it is done this way:
[1.0] Any High School student who maintains a 4.0 or higher GPA for four years would get his educational loans at a zero interest rate.
[2.0] Any High School student who maintains a 3.5 to 3.9 GPA for four years would get his educational loans at a 1.0% interest rate.
[3.0] Any High School student who maintains a 3.0 to 3.4 GPA for four years would get his educational loans at a 2.0% interest rate.
[4.0] Any High School student who maintains a 2.5 to 2.9 GPA for four years would get his educational loans at a 3.0% interest rate.
[5.0] Any High School student who maintains a 2.0 to 2.4 GPA for four years would get his educational loans at a 3.5% interest rate.
[6.0] Any High School student who maintains a 1.9 or lower GPA for four years would get his educational loans at a 4.5% interest rate.
I would make the following suggestions to improve on the Educations that the Children of Citizens of the United States of America receive. That the Department of Education would have the following Goals and Objectives;
A. Develop an overall plan to educate the children of Citizens from the age of 3 years to 24 years of age.
B. Encourage individual States to have one single School Board at the State level. Each school system would have a representative on the State’s School Board.
C. Each individual State should equally distribute Educational funds to the individual school system based upon the number of students.
D. Like the Military does, the schools should use a 10 to 1 ratio of students to teachers in a classroom. The money for the additional money for Teachers would come out of the Defense Budget.
E. Review all individual State Plans to educate the children in their State. Review all Educational books and approve or disapprove their use in the classroom.
F. Distribute Federal Government Funds to the States based on present need for the next 12 years. Thereafter, distribute 25% of the funds to the States based upon performance improvement Goals as Bonuses. Each Individual State must maintain their existing percentage of the State’s Budget that goes to Education.
G. Get Congress to pass a Law that treats “Bulling” as a “Hate Crime.”
H. Create responsibility for the student to attend class, to behave in class and on school property and do their homework.
I. Create responsibility for the Parent or Parents that the student attends school, for student’s behavior in class, and the performance of assigned homework. Failure to do so would result in the involvement of Social Services on the third offense.