A new report appeared earlier this week that shows stark disparities along racial and ethnic lines in our country’s public schools. The new report from the Department of Education includes data from the 2009-2010 school year. You can see all the data at the Civil Rights Data Collection website.
There is far more information in the report than I could possibly talk about here, but there are a few areas that journalists have focused on. I urge those of you who have the time and inclination to go to the CRDC’s website and explore the data further, although admittedly it's not that easy to navigate. I’ll add that it’s a good thing to see this report getting the kind of widespread media coverage that it has. There was a news article in the New York Times and then, the following day (today), an editorial by the NYT on their op-ed page, as well as articles in other major publications.
Most of the media coverage focused on the data that showed significant disparities in the area of discipline in schools.
From the NYT news article:
Although black students made up only 18 percent of those enrolled in the schools sampled, they accounted for 35 percent of those suspended once, 46 percent of those suspended more than once and 39 percent of all expulsions.
(snip) One in five black boys and more than one in 10 black girls received an out-of-school suspension. Over all, black students were three and a half times as likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers.
(snip) According to the schools’ reports, over 70 percent of the students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were Hispanic or black.
Additionally, the data showed all kinds of disparities in areas other than discipline. For example, schools with higher numbers of black and Hispanic students had fewer advanced academic offerings, lower average teacher pay, and teachers with less average experience.
Obviously, the numbers cited above regarding discipline are not direct evidence of active discrimination, and do not prove for certain that all these schools are acting with bias, conscious or even unconscious, toward black and Hispanic students. Having said that, the disparities are so strong that the data make clear that something is wrong with the way black and Hispanic kids are being disciplined in our schools. We as a country need to both acknowledge this problem and make it a priority to solve it, school by school, district by district.
The NYT editorial (see link above) summarized the matter as follows:
The federal disciplinary data echoes a major study in Texas last year that showed racial disparities in school discipline. Both surveys offer grim evidence that states and local districts must revisit “zero tolerance” policies, which are increasingly common in schools and often cover too broad a range of misbehaviors. Studies have shown that removing children from school can lead to long-term problems like the risk of being held back, dropping out or ending up in the juvenile justice system. Students who pose a danger to others should be suspended or expelled, but that is not the case in most removals.
Discipline is a necessary part of education and punishing bad behavior is obviously something every school needs to do. The question is whether a given school is reacting the same way to the same kind of behavior whether the student is white, black, Hispanic, or of any background. Whether in schools or in the courts, every American deserves to be judged fairly, so that all of our people feel that our institutions represent them, no matter their skin color.
A key element to strengthening national unity, something that President Obama has sought to do throughout his career, is ensuring justice. This new study shows that, although our country has made tremendous progress in the past fifty years, we still have farther to go.