Tag: school reform

What Scott Walker Hath Wrought

September 25, 2018 12:51 pm September 25, 2018

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Generally speaking, the largest group of least advantaged children in the United States, those most in need of protection, are the impoverished descendants of enslaved Africans. We might then ask,…

Generally speaking, the largest group of least advantaged children in the United States, those most in need of protection, are the impoverished descendants of enslaved Africans. We might then ask, when directing our attention to Milwaukee, the largest city in the once progressive state of Wisconsin – and part of the home base of now-politically endangered Gov. Scott Walker – what has come of that duty of care?

The latest release of findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the “gold standard” for such matters, shows that nationally 13 percent of Black students eligible for the National Lunch Program—a good enough proxy for poverty—read at or above grade level in eighth grade. This is half the percentage of White, non-Hispanic, students at a similar family income level and a quarter of the percentage of White, non-Hispanic students from more prosperous households. Less than a third of Black students from families with incomes high enough to make them ineligible for the National Lunch Program read at or above grade level in grade 8. The issue appears to be the layering of economic deprivation over racial discrimination in educational opportunities: multi-generational economic deprivation as a consequence of continuing racial discrimination.

In Milwaukee there are considerably higher percentages of Black K-12 than White K-12 students in the city’s schools. There are more than twice the percentage of White than Black college students (and three times the percentage of White male (44 percent) than male Black college students (14 percent)) These distributions are considerably different from national figures, which show approximately equal Black and White enrollment at every level. Just over a quarter of White residents of Milwaukee have only high school diplomas (including equivalents), as do considerably more, just over a third, of Black residents. On the other hand, 34 percent of White residents have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, but only 13 percent of Black residents have that increasingly necessary qualification.

In a nutshell college graduation is achievable for a third of White residents of Milwaukee, but for only just over a tenth of Black residents of the city. This is unusual. Nationally, although the figure is the same for White, non-Hispanics, it is nearly twice as high as the comparable Milwaukee figure for African-Americans (20 percent?).

Just five percent of Black students in Milwaukee eligible for the National Lunch Program read at or above grade level in eighth grade. More than half—nearly two-thirds—of these economically deprived Black students in Milwaukee are assessed as being at the “below Basic” level. They can’t read middle school material. Five percent is meaningful beyond its comparative value. It points to chance factors predominating in measurement: students answering questions at random and getting lucky; transfer students from Ghana; children of university faculty; cosmic rays.

For all reasonable intents and purposes the Milwaukee public schools are not teaching Black students to read.

The percentage of Black students in Milwaukee eligible for the National Lunch Program scoring at or above “proficient” in Mathematics in eighth grade is 3 percent. Cosmic rays as a causal factor for this achievement seems most likely.

The Milwaukee public schools are not teaching math to their Black students.

In Milwaukee, African-Americans go to school, but they rarely receive a good enough education so that they can read proficiently or perform elementary mathematics tasks or to take them into and through college. It is not then surprising that the unemployment rate for Black residents of the city is between two and three times that of White residents, that the percentage of Black residents of the city in white collar jobs is half that of White residents, that median Black household income is half that of White household income and that the poverty rate for Black families is nearly three times that for White families.

These issues are so common as to seem abstract, or to be accepted, like the weather. But like the weather, or, rather, the climate, they are not either abstract or acceptable. The condition of the descendants of enslaved Africans now living in Milwaukee is directly attributable to the decisions of politicians at the state and local level. Those decisions have reduced funding for the public schools, segregated housing and employment opportunities, criminalized daily life.

All of this brings us back to Gov. Walker, who is likely to lose his post this November (though, as he has proven in elections past, you can never fully count him out).

He has been governor of Wisconsin since 2011. Before that he was Milwaukee County executive and before that he represented a district in Milwaukee County. He has been responsible for the well-being of residents of Milwaukee, its surrounding area and the state for a quarter of a century. If residents of Milwaukee seek a monument for him, they have only to look around them.

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Rationing Opportunity This is Dropout Nation

It’s Up to You, New York

Michael Holzman

May 3, 2018 4:27 pm May 3, 2018

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For those of us who live in a rational, data-based world, it can no longer be argued that school discipline disparities can be attributed to the fictitious oddities of “the…

For those of us who live in a rational, data-based world, it can no longer be argued that school discipline disparities can be attributed to the fictitious oddities of “the Black family,” socio-economic conditions, cultural differences and the like.

Since the publication of the unchallenged, and unquestionable, report from the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments, Breaking Schools’ Rules in 2011, we have known that after having accounted “for the factors most often associated with poor school performance . . . race was a predictive factor for whether a student would be disciplined, particularly for discretionary disciplinary actions.” And further: “High rates of disciplinary involvement among African-American students were driven chiefly by violations that are subject to the discretion of school employees . . . The data . . . provide compelling evidence to show that how a school uses suspension and expulsion is driven in large part by the decisions of officials at both the district and individual school level.”

In other words, school discipline disparities by race are a good indicator of racism in schools and systems.

Which brings us to New York City, the greatest city in the world, for some, and the home to the third most-segregated school system by at least one (widely-debated) study. According to the just-released school discipline data from the U.S. Department of Education, male Black students are three and a half times as likely to be punished with one or more out-of-school suspensions as are male White students and female Black students are an astonishing eight times as likely to be punished in this way than female White students.

These disparities, by themselves, are prima facie indicators of endemic racist actions (not to speak of attitudes) in the New York City school system among “officials at both the district and individual school level.” And they are not simply of academic interest, they cause lasting harm. The Justice Center study also found that “Students who experienced suspension or expulsion, especially those who did so repeatedly, were more likely to be held back a grade or drop out of school than students who were not involved in the disciplinary system.”

It reasonably follows, then, that the decisions of district and individual school level personnel to discipline three to eight times the proportion of Black as White students likely results in disproportionate numbers of Black students being held back a grade or dropping out of school. That is one way racist attitudes and actions work to limit educational opportunities for Black students in New York City.

Another way is the “school choice” system with its apogee in the city’s selective high schools.

This year, as usual, enrollment in New York City’s selective high schools was bizarrely skewed by race, especially at the jewel of the system, Stuyvesant High School. According to the New York City Department of Education’s own records, out of a total enrollment of 3,323 students across four grades at Stuyvesant, 23 are Black as compared to, say, 35 “Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.” This is remarkable as the U.S. Census counts over two million Black residents in the city, but notes that there are too few Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders in the city to count. [However, it is evident that there are at least 35.]

“We continue to pursue a set of initiatives to increase diversity at Specialized High Schools,” the city’s education department said in a statement. Sure.

What will new Chancellor Richard Carranza and Mayor Bill de Blasio actually do to build brighter futures for the Big Apple’s Black children? [Photo courtesy of the New York Times.]

Admission to Stuyvesant, and to most of the city’s other specialized high schools, is filtered by means of a test, oddly named the Specialized High School Admissions Test. Oddly named, as it would be more aptly called the Black Student Elimination Test. Without getting into the weeds about testing theory and all that, it does seem that there are validity issues with a test that year after year eliminates all but a dozen or fewer Black students from Stuyvesant’s freshman class.

If actions repeatedly result in outcomes at variance with professed goals, it is likely that those outcomes are the actual goals of the actions in question.

Stuyvesant is only one school out of the great sea of the New York City education system, but its diversity failure is a telling indicator of the actual nature of the system. It is possible that Black students—sorry, all but a dozen Black students each year—do not get into the school for any number of reasons. The overwhelming number of Black eighth grade students might so dislike the school’s Brutalist architecture that they don’t apply. Or they might not wish to attend a school with so many more Native Hawaiians than Black students. Or they could be woefully ill-prepared by their middle schools.

As there is little research concerning the attitudes of Black middle school students in regard to architecture or Native Hawaiians (although there is some anecdotal evidence concerning the latter from interviews with former President Obama, who attended a school with large numbers of Native Hawaiians), we might consider the quality of the city’s middle schools as causal, since Stuyvesant’s admissions data directs our attention there.

The Selective High School Admissions Test is effectively a mathematics test. The recently released 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress’s eighth-grade mathematics assessment reports that nearly two-thirds of New York City’s Black eighth graders eligible for the National School Lunch Program score at the below Basic level: they can’t do middle school math. Just over half of the City’s Black students from more prosperous families can’t do middle school math either. Just 8 percent of the Black students from poor families and 15 percent of those from more prosperous families score at the proficient or above levels. This compares to 26 percent of the National School Lunch Program eligible White students and 57 percent of those White students from more prosperous families who do math proficiently or better at grade 8 in New York City.

White students from families with below average incomes are much more effectively taught mathematics in the City’s middle schools than are (the relatively few) Blacks students from more prosperous families:

It seems that family income has surprisingly little effect on eighth-grade mathematical performance of New York City’s Black students. The difference between the percentage of National School Lunch Program eligible White students scoring Proficient and Above on the NAEP mathematics assessment and those from more prosperous families scoring at that level was 31 points. For Black students it was 6 points. Not everyone will agree, of course, but this does seem to indicate that Black students, regardless of family circumstances, attend middle schools with deficient mathematics instruction.

New York City happens, “happens,” to be one of the most segregated cities in the country and its schools are similarly racially segregated. The Brown University Index of Dissimilarity measures whether one particular group is distributed in the same way as another group. A high value indicates that the two are separated from one another. A value of 60 or above is considered very high. That between Black and White residents in New York City is over 80. A consequence of this is that neighborhood schools are highly segregated by race. In other words, Black students from both National School Lunch Program eligible and ineligible families are likely to attend the same schools, as indicated by the small gap in NAEP scores. The city’s segregated schools do not have to vary in quality by, say, the percentage of Black students in the school, but the NAEP scores seem to indicate that they do.

The administrators of the New York City Schools—the Mayor, the Chancellor, their staffs and advisors—appear to know this, as is demonstrated by the city’s school choice program. This elaborate sorting of students and schools would be unnecessary if all the city’s schools offered high quality education. Its very existence is an admission by the city that the quality of schools differ so significantly as to justify this costly and cumbersome system.

They are right, of course, and they know this as they are responsible for those differences in quality, by the way in which they allocate resources, financial and human, in accordance with the racial make-up of each school’s population. “Them that’s got shall have/Them that’s not shall lose.”

A consequence of the poor educational opportunities for Black children in New York City is the comparative lack of Black intergenerational economic mobility in the city. According to Raj Chetty’s group at Stanford University, a White male child born into poverty in the city (in a family at the 25^th percentile of income distribution) will, as an adult, on average reach the 56^th income percentile. The average male Black child born into poverty in New York City will as an adult reach only the 42^nd percentile. The income of the average male Black child born into an upper middle class family with an income at the 75^th percentile will fall to the 52^nd percentile as an adult, below that of a male White adult born into poverty. (The average male White child from a similarly wealthy family will as an adult expect to have an income at the 68^th percentile.)

There are certainly other factors at play here. Racism is not limited to the schools. There is the criminal justice system with its astonishing racial disparities. There are racial disparities in higher education and in employment. But, while some may disagree, the racism in the schools does have strong effects on the later lives of Black students.

Here’s a modest proposal: Eliminate the Selective High School Admissions Test and fill the selective high schools by admitting the equivalent percentage of students from each middle school. If the number of grade 9 students in the selective high schools is, say, 10 percent of the total number of grade 9 students in the system, admit the top 10 percent of each middle school’s students. In short order there will be a shift of upper middle class White and Asian families to schools with records of badly preparing their students, so that their children will more easily make the 10 percent cut-off, followed immediately by political pressure from those families to increase the allocation of resources to those schools. Soon, quality differences across the system will lessen

This may take legislation in Albany. However, legislation in Albany does seem to occur from time to time. It is not unheard of. It could occur to produce better educational opportunities for New York City’s Black children.

There are other ways to increase educational and life opportunities for New York City’s Black students. Maintaining the status quo is not one of them.

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This is Dropout Nation Those Meaningless Diplomas

The Black Kids Are Shortchanged Everywhere

Michael Holzman

April 24, 2018 2:58 pm April 24, 2018

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The Duval County school district serves the Jacksonville, Florida, area. Jacksonville is much more typical of neighboring Georgia than of Florida. It has a relatively small Hispanic population and a history of anti-Black racism dating back hundreds of years. The district’s website proclaims recent good news:

Duval County Public Schools has emerged as a national leader in mathematics and reading outcomes on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) . . . “If this were the Olympics, you would say we medaled in almost every event,” said Superintendent Dr. Patricia Willis. “These results, in addition to our record-high graduation rate, reflect the incredible efforts of our students, our teachers, the district and our community.” . . . “The new NAEP results confirm that Duval County is one of the highest performing big city school districts in the nation,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council for Great City Schools.

Those newly released 2017 NAEP eighth-grade reading assessments show that while 42 percent of White students in the Duval County public schools can read at grade level (proficient or above), the school system teaches less than half that percentage, 18 percent, of the Black students in its care, to read proficiently at the crucial grade 8 level. Or, looking at that from the other side, well over three-quarters of the Black students in the Duval County Public Schools are not taught to read proficiently. Of those, nearly 90 percent of the male Black students in Jacksonville are not taught to read proficiently and nearly half of those can hardly read at all. We can take that as an indication of the preparation for life that is provided for Black children by the Duval County Public Schools. It is a rather unusual Olympic medal quality performance.

A primary driver of these racial disparities in educational achievement is not difficult to discover. Quite some time ago a large-scale research project in Texas demonstrated that disparities in the rate of school discipline actions were based on the racial attitudes of school personnel, rather than the actions of students. In the Duval County schools the rate at which out-of-school suspensions are given is eight percent for Black students, three percent for White students, a more than two-to-one disparity, which is a good measure of racial prejudice in action. That happens to be approximately the disparity in reading proficiency. Of course, correlation does not indicate causation.

There are consequences to this failure of the Duval district to teach most of their Black children, and nearly all of their male Black children, to read easily.

The Equality of Opportunity Project at Stanford University has studied intergenerational economic mobility by race and gender. According to the Equality of Opportunity Project, the average Black child in Jacksonville, whose household in the year 2000 had an income at or below the 25^th percentile of all American households ($28,000, very poor) would probably have an income at the 31^st percentile (just poor) by 2015, about $32,000. The average White child in Jacksonville, living in a similarly deprived household in 2000, would have had an income at the 40^th percentile in 2015, about $43,000: a nine point, $11,000, advantage for being White. While a Black child growing up in Jacksonville can expect to go up six steps on the economic mobility ladder (from very poor to merely poor), a White child can expect to go up fifteen steps, between two and three times as far and within hailing distance of the national median.

This comparative restriction of intergenerational economic mobility for Black residents of Jacksonville cannot be attributed solely to the fact that well over three-quarters of the Black students in the Duval County Public Schools are not taught to read proficiently, but it makes you think, doesn’t it?

Well, Jacksonville has a history of slavery, segregation and lynching. We can look to the free state of Wisconsin for better news . . . can’t we? The answer is no.

The 2017 NAEP eight-grade reading assessment shows that while 33 percent of White students in the Milwaukee public schools can read at grade level (proficient or above), the school system teaches less than one-fifth of that percentage, six percent, of the Black students in its care to read proficiently at the crucial grade 8 level. Or, looking at that from the other side, well over 90 percent of the Black students in the Milwaukee public schools are not taught to read proficiently and of those, 96 percent of the male Black students in Milwaukee are not taught to read proficiently. Nearly two-thirds of those can hardly read at all. We can take that as an indication of the preparation for life that is provided for Black children by the Milwaukee Public Schools. As to causation, the racial school discipline disparities in Milwaukee are similar to those in Jacksonville: a Black student is more than twice as likely to be punished with an out-of-school suspension as is a White student. In addition to being an indicator of adult racial attitudes, out-of-school suspensions are likely to lead to students falling behind in their studies and prematurely ending their educations: dropping out.

No matter where you go, traditional districts are failing the descendants of enslaved Africans.

And as to consequences, according to the Equality of Opportunity Project, the average Black child in Milwaukee, whose household in the year 2000 had an income at or below the 25^th percentile of all American households (very poor) would probably have an income at the 36^th percentile (poor) by 2015, about $38,000. The average White child in Milwaukee, living in a similarly deprived household in 2000, would have had an income at the 50^th percentile in 2015, about $56,000: a fourteen point, $18,000, advantage for being White. While a Black child growing up in Milwaukee can expect to go up eleven steps on the economic mobility ladder (from very poor to merely poor), a White child can expect to go up twenty-five steps, more than twice as far and pretty close to the national median. White children growing up in severe poverty in Milwaukee can expect to participate in the American dream of dramatic economic mobility; the Black children living in that city cannot even dream of it.

Just as in Jacksonville.

Neither district is fulfilling its responsibility to educate all children. The size of the racial gaps resulting from these failures are similar. If disparities in school discipline rates are a valid measure of racism (which they are), that, too is similar. And if the Equality of Opportunity Project’s calculations are correct, as they seem to be, the perhaps consequent restrictions on economic mobility for the Black residents of these two American cities will, similarly, continue from one generation to the next.

The Equality of Opportunity Project researchers point out that the Black/White racial economic disparities are not a result of factors under the control of Black Americans. Rather, they are the result of factors, such as disparate incarceration rates and the school issues touched on above, that are under the control of the people running the criminal justice and school systems and other social, economic and political aspects of life in this country. They are under the control of that governor, that mayor, this superintendent of schools, this judge and that chief of police in both Jacksonville and Milwaukee—and those in many other cities and towns in this great country.

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This is Dropout Nation Those Meaningless Diplomas

Beyond Graduation Rate Scandals

Alex Medler

March 19, 2018 2:24 pm March 19, 2018

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Recent scandals in places like Washington, D.C. have prompted debates over high school graduation requirements. Many observers rightfully express concern that students who are unprepared for the next stage of their lives might receive meaningless diplomas. They propose that we strictly enforce requirements.

If we take this advice, presumably fewer people will walk across a stage to receive a diploma they didn’t earn. On the plus side, these changes will make our school systems more honest about what high schools have achieved; and they will better inform graduates about their preparation for higher education. Unfortunately, along the way we may reduce opportunities for many young people to get the help they need to succeed as independent adults. People can argue about who deserves to graduate, however, if we decide to keep more kids from graduating, we should also agree that kids who don’t graduate deserve more public support that will also prepares them for the rest of their lives.

Instead of making a more strictly-enforced sorting device that denies more young people access to a good future, future systems that increase our ability to document a young person’s suitability for further study or training ought to tell us about all young people. We should learn what dropouts know and can do. That way we can help them all transition to the next stage in their education, training, or work.

Recent years have seen significant increases high school graduation rates. Today’s scandals indicate that some of this increase has more to do with lowering standards than to gains in learning. Many districts now award diplomas to 15 percent more of their students than they did a decade ago. When it comes to the next phase of their lives, however, do we really think the bottom 10 percent of graduates are that different from the top 10 percent of dropouts? And if both groups need a lot more help to become self-sufficient adults, we ought to not use the diploma to judge who is worthy of our continued support.

Diplomas have different uses for different audiences. For students, they are a motivation. To be crass, the diploma is a reward for sitting still for four years, behaving as expected, and for doing all the work to master basic material. For employers and higher education institutions, a diploma is expected to certify that a student is ready for the next stage in their learning and growth. For society, leaving high school is a proxy for adult-hood; and the diploma means that the new adult succeeded at being a teenager. But our current diplomas don’t necessarily fulfill each audience’s needs.

Among both graduates and dropouts, there is a wide range in students’ knowledge and skills. Some of these new graduates may be academically closer to the better prepared dropouts than they are other graduates. Admittedly, this is more likely due to a generally poor state preparation than it is to large numbers of dropouts with strong skills.

But there are many dropouts who were doing fine in high school before things went poorly; just as there are many graduates who skated through high school with very low grades in classes that expected little of them. If we learn more about both types of students, we can help them both.

Most of the debates over high graduation standards focus on attendance. Students were given credit for classes even though they had more absences than allowed in district policy. Technically, they should have failed their courses, which would have meant they didn’t earn enough credit to graduate.

In addition to “seat time”, diplomas signal mastery of content and the student’s ability to persevere and follow rules. But when a young person lacks a diploma, we don’t know why. Some didn’t attend class enough to pass. Others misbehaved. Others, attended and behaved, but didn’t learn the material well enough to pass. Labeling a person as a dropout doesn’t tell us which of these challenges tripped them up, only that they did not achieve all three.

Instead of focusing on what they lack, for both graduates and dropouts, it would help if we could better understand and certify what they have accomplished and what they are able to do. It is helpful to know if they could behave, if they persevered enough to attend regularly, and what they learned and are able to do. And as we identify these strengths and assets, we can match them to services and programs where they are most likely to succeed. Ideally, more young people can be encouraged to do all the challenging work required in the next step, and we can counsel them to the most appropriate opportunities – where they can gain the skills and knowledge they need for whatever it is they want to do next.

There are some who argue that if we give a diploma away too easily, we “aren’t doing them any favors.” I think I disagree. As long as many opportunities for further study or other support are tied to high school completion, and so many young people need more study and help, then a diploma may constitute a favor. As we argue about where we draw the line between dropout and graduate, if we don’t invest enough in dropouts, we ought to revisit what it means to draw the line at all.

Giving fewer young people a diploma will increase our confidence that most of the remaining graduates are prepared, but it could also swell the ranks of the dropouts, who are less willing or able to continue their studies or prepare for well-paying work.

There’s a lot of handwringing about the graduation scandal at D.C. Public Schools. But there is little discussion about the underlying problem of the failures of American public education.

Instead of a slow-moving tragedy, recent debates could be helpful if they drive discussions about how we prepare all young people for the workforce or for further study and career training.

Far too many high school graduates and dropouts are not prepared to succeed after they leave high school. There are remarkable exceptions, including charter networks with strong records preparing more young people to earn college degrees. We should explore how to use similar strategies and tools to help more young people, regardless of where they are, transition successfully.

As it stands, American higher education (which includes traditional colleges as well as workforce training programs run by community colleges), and the kinds of jobs that include training, are all more likely to be available to high school graduates than they are to dropouts. Many programs explicitly target dropouts, and some of these opportunities are open to both graduates and dropouts. But many young people who dropout decide not to try, or they don’t know how to pursue the most beneficial pathways. Compounding these individual tragedies, as a society, we are too comfortable with dropouts’ subsequent self-limiting decisions.

Unless we change our attitudes toward dropouts, efforts to deny diplomas to more young people are likely to reduce their access to further training – as well as the accompanying public investments in their futures.

We should certainly use this current debate to push for changes that clarify what it takes to earn a diploma. But we should also expand what we do as a society to prepare all these young people to succeed – even if they don’t graduate.

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Three Thoughts

Parkland Shooting Doesn’t Justify More Cops and Harsh Discipline

March 8, 2018 3:51 pm March 8, 2018

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Tragedy has a way of bringing out demagoguery. This has been especially true in the weeks since 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz went on a murderous rampage in Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High…

Tragedy has a way of bringing out demagoguery. This has been especially true in the weeks since 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz went on a murderous rampage in Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and took the lives of 17 young men and women who should be sitting in classrooms today. This includes the Occupant of the White House and others calling for laws allowing teachers and other adults in schools to carry firearms into classrooms, an idea that ignores the obstacles to that being effective under any circumstances and would increase the violence to which Black and Brown children are already subjected.

Once of the demagogic arguments emerging from the Parkland massacre is one being perpetuated is the idea that Cruz’s rampage would have been stemmed if not for efforts encouraged by the Obama Administration to stem the overuse of harsh school discipline — including the presence of cops patrolling the corridors of public schools.

As argued by less-reputable outlets and conservative writers such as Breitbart and Ann Coulter as well as supposedly respectable types such as Manhattan Institute’s Max Eden (based mostly off a clip job of a Washington Post article) and (with a little more reason) David French of National Review, if the Broward district, as part of its PROMISE school discipline reform initiative, didn’t team up with the county’s sheriff to reduce the number of students being arrested for minor offenses, Cruz would have been arrested and kept from doing harm to his former schoolmates.

Particularly for Eden, the Parkland massacre is another way to oppose school discipline reforms happening throughout the country, as well as overturn the Obama Administration-era guidance advising districts to not overuse suspensions and other discipline, especially against poor and minority children. Of course, this isn’t shocking; Eden will engage in any kind of sophistry and data fudging to advance his cause.

The problem, as you can expect, is that this line of argument doesn’t stand up to these rather demonstrable facts.

The first, as the Washington Post notes, is that Broward did plenty when it came to Cruz and his issues. This includes twice transferring him to an alternative high school, Cross Creek, after his behavioral issues became too difficult for teachers and school leaders to handle, as well as referring the young man to Florida’s child welfare agency after a fight during the 2016-2017 school year; the child welfare agency determined that he was of little risk to himself or to those around him.

Some would say that Cruz’s case illustrates the crucial need for schools to provide mental health care, a subject of earlier Dropout Nation commentaries, as well as the general social need to do better in providing community mental health care. Others may say it demonstrates the failure of social service agencies in identifying those who endanger others as well as themselves. Both may be true. At the same time, based on the evidence, the real issue seems to lie with state laws that make it all too easy for anyone to obtain a firearm.

The second: That Broward County still arrests and refers thousands of children to juvenile and criminal justice systems. Twenty-two hundred sixty-eight students were arrested or referred during the 2015-2016 school year, according to data from the Florida Department of Education. While that number is two-thirds lower than arrests and incidents in 2009-2010, the numbers have remained constant since 2011-2012.

The presence of cops in schools hasn’t led to greater safety for children. This is because crime in schools has been in decline for three decades. What their presence has done is caused harm, physical and otherwise, to youth such as Noe Nino de Rivera.

What has changed is that Broward is less likely to have children arrested and referred for incidents that can be handled within schools. Crimes that should be handled by cops such as battery, sexual assault, drug possession and weapons possession accounted for 64.4 percent of arrests and referrals in 2015-2016 versus 47.4 percent in 2009-2010. Other incidents traditionally handled by schools are, well, being handled by them. This includes fighting, which now accounts for 8.9 percent of referrals versus 27.6 percent of them six years ago.

This has resulted in Broward reducing the number of children put on the path to prison overall, an effort that, by the way, predate the implementation of the district’s PROMISE program; referrals declined by 64 percent between 2009-2010 and 2010-2011. This is especially true when it comes to poor and minority children who made up the majority of children arrested and referred according to data submitted by Broward to the federal government.

The number of Black children in regular classrooms arrested and referred, for example, declined by two-thirds between 2009-2010 and 2013-2014 (from 3,835 to 1,011), while the rate of arrest and referral declined from 3.8 percent to 1 percent in that same period. [The percentage of White children arrested and referred declined from 1.3 percent to four-tenths of one percent in that same period, with a two-thirds decline in the numbers (from 920 to 267) in that time period.] Overall, the number of Broward children in regular classrooms arrested and referred declined by 70.5 percent (from 6,050 to 1,786) in that period.

Which leads to a third fact: For all that Broward is doing, it is still condemning far too many children to juvenile and criminal justice systems. “Disruption on campus”, a catch-all term that covers plenty of non-violent and minor behaviors now account for 18.7 percent of referrals versus a mere 7.9 percent in 2009-2010. This is way too high. Black children still account for 57.8 of students arrested and referred despite accounting for just 39.6 percent of enrollment. Given that Cruz himself was considered a White student, he was far less likely than his Black former peers to be arrested or referred to law enforcement.

This problem extends to other forms of harsh discipline. While Broward meted out one or more suspensions by 61.6 percent between 2009-2010 and 2013-2014, the number of suspensions meted out against Black children increased by 43.6 percent (from 1,490 to 2,139). Even worse, Black students account for 62.6 percent of out-of-school suspensions meted out in 2013-2014, versus 16.7 percent of suspensions four years earlier.

Finally, contrary to the assertions of these demagogues (as well as the views of many opponents of reforming school discipline), the reality is that the presence of cops in schools does nothing to make them safer. The body of research was clear even before the Parkland massacre, in which a Broward County sheriff’s deputy patrolling the premises didn’t take on Cruz when he began shooting up the school.

As Dropout Nation detailed over the past few years, more districts, especially those in big cities, are launching their own police agencies even as youth crime has been on a three decade-long decline. Between 1996 and 2008, the number of districts operating police departments more than doubled (from 117 to 250), according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Districts are also bringing in more cops from police departments. The number of cops in schools increased by 38 percent between 1997 and 2007; today, 43 percent of America’s schools (including 42 percent of high schools and another 23 percent of elementary schools where children younger than 12 are supposed to be learning) are patrolled by some form of law enforcement.

Yet as the Justice Policy Institute notes in a report released in 2011, there is no evidence that increased presence of law enforcement in schools leads to safer schools. If anything, the presence of cops in schools all but ensures that children will be arrested and referred to juvenile and criminal justice systems. As University of Florida Professor Jason Nance determined in a 2016 study, the increased presence of police in schools always leads to more children and teens being arrested, even after controlling for demographics and levels of crime in surrounding communities. Those arrests, in turn, are often for minor infractions that are better-handled by teachers and school leaders. In Birmingham, Ala., for example, 86 percent of students arrested in 2009-2010 were picked up for disruptive behavior and other issues that would usually be handled in schools.

Even worse, poor and minority children, along with those condemned to the nation’s special education ghettos, are the ones most-likely to be targeted by cops. Black children, for example, were 2.2 times more-likely to be arrested or referred to juvenile and criminal justice systems than White peers in 2013-2014, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education; youth in special ed accounted for 26 percent of arrests and referrals in 2012-2013, according to Center for Public Integrity in its analysis. Meanwhile in South Carolina, Black children accounted for 70.9 percent of the arrests and referrals to juvenile justice for the catch-all of “disturbing schools” in 2014-2015, according to the American Civil Liberties Union; this is despite the fact that Black children make up little more than a third of all children in the state’s public education system.

Meanwhile the presence of cops also leads to children being assaulted and abused by them. From the 110 incidents of pepper-spraying of children by cops patrolling the schools of the Birmingham, Ala., district , to the permanent injuring of Noe Nino de Rivera, a 17-year-old junior Cedar Creek High School in Bastrop County, Texas, who ended up in a coma for a full year after an officer tased him, there are far too many instances of cops harming children. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ detailed in its own analysis, school cops are often poorly trained to address problems in schools, and therefore, unfit to handle minor issues that teachers and school leaders can address in less-physically harmful ways. We need fewer cops in schools, not more.

Put simply, contrary to what conservatives and opponents of school discipline reform want to think, rare mass shootings such as the Parkland Massacre won’t be solved by the presence of more cops and harsher discipline. Of course, if those folks (especially Coulter and Eden) actually cared about children, they wouldn’t suggest this in the first place. Or use tragedy as grist for their mills of demagoguery.

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Three Thoughts

Reformers Can Help Fulfill the Dream

February 14, 2018 3:29 pm February 14, 2018

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There has been some important news on the future of the 780,000 undocumented immigrant children, young adults and even teachers protected from deportation under the now-cancelled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and now facing the possibility of being removed from the country they have called home for nearly their entire lives. That news should rally school reformers to do more to help the Dreamers who are in our schools and teaching in classrooms — and stand up against a political regime engaged in what can best be called low-grade ethnic cleansing.

First came yesterday’s ruling by a U.S. District Court Judge in Brooklyn that, along with a ruling handed down earlier this month, halts the Trump Administration’s effort to fully shut down the program. In the case, Vidal et. al. v. Nielsen, Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that the plaintiffs, which include TK Dreamers under threat of deportation, will likely win their effort to stop the cancellation of DACA because the regime didn’t offer “legally adequate reasons” to do so.

In his injunction, Garaufis found that the Trump Administration’s main justifications for ending DACA — that it would be found unconstitutional if challenged in court by a group of attorneys general that had threatened a lawsuit over the initiative, and that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Immigration and Naturalization Act — were “legally erroneous” and were based on faulty interpretations of both laws. Just as importantly, the administration’s own files prove lie to those justifications; essentially, the judge found that the regime was making things up as it went along. Finally, as Garaufis points out, the fact that the Trump Administration cannot reconcile its argument that DACA would be found unconstitutional (and places the federal government at “litigation risk”) and still continue to operate certain aspects of DACA; either it had to shut down the program entirely or keep it operating and find another justification for shutting it down.

You can expect the Trump administration to appeal the ruling as it has the similar injunction handed down last month by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in University of California v. Department of Homeland Security. Nor does the ruling help those Dreamers whose protections from deportation have already expired; they are probably unable to reapply for those protections because their deadlines have already passed. But it can help those Dreamers still covered under DACA even after March, when the administration planned to end the program altogether.

The bigger and more-important play is happening on the floor of the U.S. Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in his usual unwillingness to lead, has allowed a free-for-all debate on immigration policy that has often added more-confusion over matters than anything concrete.

The Trump Administration has already staked its ground, calling for Congressional Republicans to support a proposal from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley that would allow Dreamers (including an additional one million who could either not qualify for DACA or didn’t apply out of fear of being tracked down and deported if an administration decided to cancel it) to gain citizenship after 12 years after meeting a series of steps that include gaining a higher education credential and not getting a criminal record. It is essentially a version of the immigration restriction plan Trump proposed last month.

As it was the case last month, Congressional Democrats and some Republicans, including Arizona’s Jeff Flake and John McCain, have already balked at the Grassley plan because of the restrictions and because Dreamers who have already spent their entire lives in this country shouldn’t have to wait another 12 years to become citizens. It has also been rejected by nativists among Congressional Republicans who want to do even more to keep out Latino, Asian and African (in short, non-White and non-European) emigres from becoming part of the American Dream. They would prefer a plan offered two months ago by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, which would be even more-restrictive than what Grassley has offered.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, in his unwillingness to lead, has brought even more chaos to the discussion around helping DACA youth.

Meanwhile the other plans being offered up — including bills that would simply focus on giving Dreamers the citizenship status that nearly all of them have rightfully earned by being good citizens in all but paper — face tough odds of passage. Which isn’t shocking. Over the past two decades, thanks to opposition to expansive immigration as well as political machinations by both parties geared towards denying political victories for both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, little movement has been made on either granting Dreamers citizenship or addressing the immigration system itself, which is a legacy of America’s racialism and bigotry toward Asians, Eastern European Jews and the Irish (who were deemed too Catholic and loyal to the Pope to be sufficiently American).

With the future of Dreamers needlessly in flux, there’s a need for all Americans to stand up and fight for youth who have been Americans and good citizens in all but name. The school reform movement, in particular, can help in some important ways.

At the national level, there are already reform outfits such as Teach For America, Emerson Collective and the Education Trust who have actively advocated for Dreamers to gain the citizenship they deserve. Yet as I have noted on Monday and over the past few months, the movement itself hasn’t done enough on their behalf. Given that 606,000 of DACA youth (both eligible and already covered) are in elementary, secondary and postsecondary schools (and another 9,000 are teaching children in classrooms), it is absolutely immoral for reformers to not fight for them. That it is also the politically savvy thing to do (you know, a way to win allies for transforming American public education) is also true. But first and foremost, do right for children.

One simple and easy reformers, especially Beltway players, can help out: Sign onto to letters and petitions being circulated on Capitol Hill by outfits such as United We Dream; a simple call or e-mail to these groups to become signatories is easy to do. [Calling up Teach For America to help with its efforts also makes sense.] Reform outfits with stronger connections to Congress, including National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, can do more by sending letters and asking their members to call their senators and representatives to demand a reasonable (that is, not 12 years of hoops) path to citizenship. They can even bring up the issue during meetings with congressional staffers during day visits to Capitol Hill. On a financial level, individual reformers and organizations can support efforts such as the Journey to Stay Home, a march from New York City to Washington, D.C., to bring further attention to the individual plight of Dreamers.

What about on the ground? There are things that can be done. Charter school operators who have DACA youth (as well as children of undocumented emigres) can take the step of being sanctuaries for those children. This means not cooperating with ICE cops in their inquiries as well as keeping watch for attempts by immigration officers to round up parents and children in front of their schools. Traditional districts such as Chicago Public Schools have already taken similar steps. Reformers working in communities can also talk to immigration rights activists about how they can provide support and cover on the ground.

The most-important thing reformers can do for DACA youth and other Dreamers is to stand up, speak up, and be counted. As individuals, you can write to your senators and representatives and ask them to defend Dreamers by supporting legislation that focuses solely on their path to citizenship. If you work in schools and know a Dreamer, let them know that you have their back. Within your organizations, make the case for leadership to stand up and be counted; how can an outfit be a credible advocate for kids when it isn’t working for all of them?

Champions for children must stand up at all times for every child no matter who they are. The time to defend the lives and futures of Dreamers is now.

Featured photo courtesy of NBC News.

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