Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

WASHINGTON – Across the country, minority students are punished more frequently and more severely for similar offenses than their white peers.

That was one of the points of a White House conference Wednesday, July 22, that also attempted to find solutions and alternatives to traditional school punishment.

Arne Duncan, secretary of education, said that, when he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, he learned that a majority of arrested students were arrested during the school day.

“It was our schools who were calling the police to have our kids arrested,” Duncan said. “We met the enemy. It was us.”

Duncan said Chicago reduced student arrest rates by replacing security guards with social workers.

The conference, “Rethink School Discipline,” brought together policymakers, educators and social activists. Members of the audience had opportunities to ask policymakers about school discipline. The goal was to talk about alternatives to traditional school punishment – suspensions and expulsions.

According to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, African-American students make up 16 percent of students but 31 percent of all school-related arrests. White students were 51 percent of enrollment and 39 percent of those arrested.

Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice, said that the environment of a school matters. Replacing security guards with social workers at schools signals a more supportive environment to students.

The racial disparity in school discipline precedes kindergarten. African-American students make up 18 percent of U.S. preschoolers, yet receive 48 percent of all penalties more severe than school suspension, according to the Education Department report.

And though prejudice is declining, many teachers stereotype students they discipline because of implicit bias, said UCLA Professor Phillip Atiba Goff.

Goff said the “Two Strikes” study by Jason A. Okonofua and Jennifer L. Eberhardt found that teachers turn toward racial stereotypes when punishing repeat offenders.

African-American students disciplined a second time were given more severe punishments than white students, even if the offense was the same.

Goff said one solution to implicit bias in school punishment is to use a discipline matrix that charts how to penalize students for first and repeat offenses. This method would prevent teachers from using unconscious stereotypes when disciplining students of different races.

“There really is a growing recognition about the overuse of suspension and expulsion,” Gupta said. “The school environment is unique. It is very different than policing and patrolling the streets.”

Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the president, said because of the shooting in Charleston and recent attention toward policing, the country is ready to listen to the president’s message about how race intersects with other issues, such as school punishment.

Anna Deavere Smith, playwright and actress on “Nurse Jackie,” has tried to carry that message into her work. In her latest play, “Notes From the Field: Doing Time in Education, the California Chapter,” Smith portrays several characters based on people she has interviewed to show the path of marginalized youth from school to prison.

“The problem is so big, it attracts people from all kinds of disciplines,” Smith said. “The country is ready to hear this now. It’s going to take a new kind of moral imagination in this country.”

The racial gap in school suspensions and expulsions extend to prison. About one in three African-American males born today will go to prison in his lifetime. For Hispanic males, the number is one in every 6, and for white males, it’s one in 17.

“What we spend on incarceration could provide early childhood education for every 3- or 4-year-old. It could provide free tuition to every student at a public university in our country,” Jarrett said. “What is wrong with us that those aren’t our priorities?”