As America enters 2024, its public education system and disciplinary practices are, undoubtedly, flawed. While it has improved from the days of the Little Rock Nine, there’s still a long way to go. For example, across the country, it is found that minority students, most specifically African American students, are subject to higher levels of discipline for the same infraction than their caucasian counterparts. Within this paper, I want to express the need to reform school discipline, because a student should never have their future put in peril because of the color of their skin.
Instead of reform and personal help, students face suspension and expulsion.
Not only are these discipline policies inherently racist, they cause a major detriment to the academic future of the students who are subject to these policies. As research by the American Psychological Association (APA) found, 26% of African American students, compared to 2% of white students, received suspensions for the same offense. What were these terrible crimes? As the APA says, “dress code violations, inappropriate language, or using a cell phone in class.” Studies have also shown that when students who are punished by these policies, they fall behind their classmates, causing near irreversible damage. So, after being punished initially for a minor infraction, they are stuck behind their classmates, inhibiting their academic progress.
A one-on-one interview conducted with an Indian student at Hinsdale Central who has experienced the effects of some of these policies showed how real this issue is. His story was that, when he failed to do one or two homework assignments for a class during a tough time in his life, he immediately received disciplinary emails and phone calls to both him and his parents, after a failure to even consult him on what was going wrong. While this student did not receive suspension for expulsion for their “crimes”, plenty of similarities can be seen. In attempting to connect with the student and ask as to why he wasn’t completing the homework, maybe the teacher would’ve been able to see that the student was in a rough season of their life. Instead, they completely blew it out of proportion and failed to help their student succeed.
Some say that these crack-down, brutal policies are the only way to teach children.. While that may be true in certain cases, it should be far from the first disciplinary action, no matter what. Those policies dull student’s creativity and make them fear making mistakes, when mistakes are often the best way to learn.
Luckily, school discipline has an answer. An Education Week article explored solutions and applied them to school environments. Large amounts of research show that starting with a comprehensive review of current school policies to identify shortcomings, as well as perform a school-wide “climate check” to find previous biases that may already infect the school’s populace. From there, Education Week says administrators should “Begin incorporating fundamental strategies of restorative practices into the classroom. The focus shifts to learning how to resolve conflict, repair harm, and heal relationships, which builds skills for students to work through issues with others.” This can help students create bonds with one another as well as faculty, leading to a more trusting environment. Plain as day, simple solutions are available. It’s time Hinsdale Central administrators implement them.
