WASHINGTON - African-American or Hispanic students may be more likely to be suspended, expelled - or even arrested - than their white peers. What's not clear is why.
Is it discrimination, as some civil-rights groups contend, or are minority students committing more infractions? Or are minority students receiving tougher punishments than whites for similar incidents?
What is known, from an Education Department civil-rights report released Tuesday, is that Hispanic and African-American students make up nearly three-quarters of students involved in school-related arrests or cases handed over to police. The report also found that black students are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended or expelled. And a disproportionate number of black students with disabilities are strapped down or subjected to other restraints.
"The sad fact is that minority students across America face much harsher discipline than non-minorities, even within the same school," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
People are also reading…
Neither Duncan nor the report provided the details behind the numbers.
Civil-rights activists said they weren't surprised by the results. They blamed "zero tolerance" policies that they say contribute to a "schools-to-prisons" pipeline. The problem, they say, is that zero tolerance applies more to minorities than white children.
Duncan said some school officials might not have been aware of inconsistencies in how they handle discipline. "We're not alleging overt discrimination in some or all of these cases," he said.
Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, a think tank that specializes in social issues affecting minority communities, said research shows that black and Hispanic children are punished more harshly for the same offenses than white kids. "There's bias in classrooms. There's also this perception of children of color as being criminals," Dianis said
Raul Gonzalez, legislative director at the National Council of La Raza who taught school in New York, said zero-tolerance policies in both schools and courtrooms have created a system that takes children out of school and ultimately leads them into prison where they become hardened criminals. He said more moderate responses are needed in schools, and he hopes that the report will lead not just to a change in policies in schools, but to state laws.
The Education Department findings come from a national collection of civil-rights data from 2009-10 of schools serving 85 percent of the nation.
According to the report, 42 percent of the referrals to law enforcement involve black students and 29 percent involved Hispanics, while 35 percent of students involved in school-related arrests were black and 37 percent were Hispanic. Black students made up 18 percent of the students in the sample, but they were 35 percent of students suspended once and 39 percent of students expelled.
On StarNet: Find education-related resources, special reports and the Student of the Week feature at azstarnet.com/education
