Now Is Not the Time to Meddle in School Disciplinary Policy

School administrators are already struggling to deal with the challenge of stressed out kids. The threat of civil rights investigations won’t fix anything.

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Any day now, Catherine Lhamon, the assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights, is expected to release new guidance for school districts, telling them how to handle racial disparities in suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and other touchy discipline issues. 

It couldn’t come at a worse time.

According to news stories from around the country, including Erica Green’s searing portrait in the New York Times of a Pennsylvania steel-town’s high school, the confluence of multiple crises has turned our schools into a tinderbox. 

Three hours into a recent Monday morning, blood had already been spilled in a hallway at Liberty High School. With his walkie-talkie in hand, the principal, Harrison Bailey III, called on the custodial staff to clean up the remnants of a brawl while hurrying to the cafeteria in hopes of staving off another.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ Given that black students are three times more likely than white students to live in poverty, is it that hard to believe that they might also be more likely to misbehave? Not because of their race, but because of everything related to growing up poor? “

    I don’t think it’s that hard to believe that. There are other factors but I’ve never bought the racial arguments.

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    Ti Cyclist

    I went to urban schools in the 60's where the population was going from white to black. Reflecting back on it for the past few yers, there was unequal treatment, the blacks getting the short end. Not that they did not misbehave— we all did to some extent. Too many (by no means all) lacked the support we had though— their parents to often did not show up, many had no one to make sure they got their homework done and their grades stayed acceptable, and I doubt many of them had home lives conducive to learning how navigate and shake off the irritation of adolescence. They were the ones who got sent to reform school and for whom the police were called. That being said, kids have a right to feel safe to learn and walk about their schools— too often I sure as hell did not, and I am sure that was because of fear some 60's civil rights group would start protesting if the chronically misbehaving kids got the (when needed) firm guidance the rest of did because the vice-principal knew he would get some support in our homes.

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  3. Jenny Van De Pol

    I have never posted online comments to an article before. But I am a school board member in Central California, and this article is so spot-on that I felt compelled to speak-up. I contemplated just writing one word: YES.

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  4. Richard Fulmer

    "Unfortunately, we don’t have real-time information to tell us whether there’s been a widespread increase in student misbehavior since schools reopened nationwide this fall; such data lag by at least three years."

    A three-year lag: one more reason we shouldn't be trying to micromanage anything from Washington.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    It's easy to blame poverty, but plenty of poor rural kids have lower rates of misbehaving than do some of these urban schools. When schools permit disciplinary infractions to go with minimal punishment, expect more of them.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      So I think that’s a fair point and I haven’t looked at the data. And the plural of anecdote is not data. But I went to high school with a lot of poor rural kids and we had plenty of disciplinary problems. Lots of fights freshman year. Sophomore year we got a new principal and he really cleaned things up. Discipline was a big factor and also just the fact that he commanded respect and had an imposing but friendly presence.

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  6. Avatar photo
    George.Skinner

    The problem with curbing disciplinary policies because of their impact on the kids facing discipline is that it fails to address the impact of those kids on everybody else in the classroom. Kids who lose learning opportunities because the teacher is dealing with behavior problems of a few particularly troublesome students are also harmed. Race is preventing people from dealing with the real problems, which tend to be rooted in socioeconomic class and parenting problems. In my younger daughter’s former school, there were several problem students. They just happened to be white, which didn’t make the school’s ineffectual response any less of a problem.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      Yep. It’s hard to learn anything when the teacher can’t teach uninterrupted for five minutes.

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  7. Avatar photo
    CynthiaW

    Caption: Child collapses in despair because she forgot her locker combination AGAIN

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    1. Avatar photo
      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      Alternative Caption: 𝘾𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙙 𝙪𝙥𝙨𝙚𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙥𝙚𝙩 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙜 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙙.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Silvertide

    Isabella 'Izzy' Tichenor, was a 10 year old autistic black child who took her own life after being bullied by school students and teachers. For example when students said she smelled because she was black and thus dirty teachers took out air fresheners and sprayed around her. This happened in Utah last year and so when I see articles where students are still subjected to this garbage I say pandemic or not the government needs to find these schools and crush them. out of existence.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Megan Taylor

      Just to clarify, the air freshener incident came about because the teacher told her class they were stinky and needed to shower every day (a lecture many 5th graders need to hear), and a boy in Izzy's class then told her she smelled. She sprayed air freshener on herself before school, perhaps out of fear that she was disappointing her teacher. There is a lot wrong about that school district in particular and many, many others in general. But from what local news has reported, the air freshener incident was largely a matter of very sad misunderstanding (the male classmate's comment excepted).

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      1. Richard Fulmer

        Wow. Wildly different versions of the same story. No wonder people are at each other’s throats.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Megan Taylor

          I would not want my comment interpreted as a defense of racist behavior, and the death of this little girl is unspeakably heartbreaking. I have an autistic nephew who misinterprets joking amongst his cousins, to the point of even threatening to kill them out of hurt feelings when no hurt was intended. It is heartbreaking to see him take literally remarks that were made in jest, to see him hurt by cousins who love him and don't mean offense. This little girl and her family needed much more support than it appears she was receiving. And the Davis school district and so many others need immediate remediation. But it is so so so important to get the facts straight as much as possible to avoid misunderstanding, even when the larger situation is deeply troubling.

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    2. Richard Fulmer

      Clearly, the students in the Utah school needed to be disciplined. Catherine Lhamon's new guidance will make disciplining students more difficult.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Silvertide

        This was not only students but teachers and facility which were helping to bully this girl. With that much racial animosity on staff I would love to see if there is any correlation with minority students in detention or other demerits.

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        1. Richard Fulmer

          Then that’s a completely different discussion. This article was about guidelines that discourage disparate rates of student discipline as if girls misbehave as often as boys or Chinese-American students as often as Black students. Children who misbehave, disrupt classes, and bully other students should be disciplined regardless of their skin color and regardless of any quotas.

          To your point, teachers and administrators who torment students, and who encourage others students to torment them, have no place in our schools. Employment rules and teachers’ union rules that make firing such people difficult or impossible must be eliminated. School boards that tolerate such behavior by administrators and teachers must be replaced.

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