A Note to My
Readers >>>>>
As you scroll on down
this blog, you will come to three articles recently published in the Star Tribune, interspersed with my
text. All three are related to slight
improvements in graduation rates in Minnesota, raising the question as to
whether that constitutes good news, given that so many students who do graduate
are ill-prepared for colleges and universities, and that both academic results
and graduation rates for students in a multiplicity of demographic categories
are not favorable.
Given below is an
article that appeared on the Opinion Pages of the Star Tribune on Sunday, 18 March 2018, written by former columnist and
still frequent contributor, Katherine Kersten.
As you did previously
with the three-article series mentioned above, please now first read this
article with analytical attention to subtext and with the goal of forming your own
views on the issues explicitly or implicitly raised. By Wednesday (21 March), I’ll post my
commentary on Katherine Kersen’s article.
Please now read the
article, as follows >>>>>
Introductory script
from Star Tribune editorial board,
giving the thematic gist of
Kersten’s article
>>>>>
“A state agency aims
to eliminate
disparities in
schools’ response to
misbehavior. Its destabilizing
course would only
spread chaos in
our classrooms.”
Article
(“Undisciplined,” 18 March 2018) written by Katherine Kersten >>>>>
Brace yourself, parents of
Minnesota. Here’s what’s coming soon to
a school near you:
Increased violence, brazen challenges
to teachers’ authority and a chaotic environment where learning is an uphill
battle. Teachers who try to exert
control will find their hands tied, and some kids--- no longer accountable for their
behavior--- will feel free to provoke
mischief and mayhem.
If this happens at your school, you’ll
be able to thank the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR). In fall 2017, the department sent letters to
43 school districts and charter schools across the state, announcing that the
schools are under investigation because their student discipline records
suggest that black and Native American students are disciplined at a rate that
exceeds their proportion of the student population.
On March 2, the department released a
report it said showed that, in the 2015-16 school year, minority
students--- 31 percent of the state’s
student population--- accounted for 66
percent of school suspensions and expulsions.
MDHR has declined to make public either
the letters or the identity of the districts targeted, citing ongoing
investigations. But Human Rights
Commissioner Kevin Lindsey provided troubling details in a recent interview
with MinnPost.
Here, in essence, is MDHR’s
position: The primary cause of racial
discipline gaps is racist teachers and discipline policies, not differing rates
of student misbehavior. Schools must
move to end these statistical group disparities. If administrators don’t agree to change their
disciplinary practices in ways that reduce black and Native American discipline
rates, according to MinnPost, “Lindsey says that the state will initiate
litigation.”
We’ve seen this movie before, most
recently in the St. Paul Public Schools.
There, it had devastating
consequences for students of all
backgrounds. MDHR bureaucrats must have
been the only people in St. Paul who weren’t paying attention to this debacle.
In St. Paul schools--- as virtually everywhere in the
country--- black students, as a group,
are referred for discipline at higher rates than other students. Starting around 2012, the district’s leaders
tried to narrow this gap by lowering behavior expectations and removing
meaningful penalties for student misconduct.
For example, they spent millions of dollars on “white privilege”
training for teachers, and dropped “continual willful disobedience” as a
suspendable offense.
Violence and disorder quickly
escalated. In some schools, anarchic
conditions made learning difficult, if not impossible, according to teachers. In December 2015, after a vicious attack by a
student left a high school teacher with a traumatic brain injury, Ramsey County
Attorney John Choi labeled the trend of violence a “public health crisis,”
according to news accounts.
By that time, suspensions--- which had initially fallen--- had surged to their highest rate in five
years. Black students, about 30 percent
of the student body, were 77 percent of those suspended. The St. Paul teachers’ union threatened to
strike over safety concerns, and families who valued education began flooding
out of St. Paul schools. In June 2016,
the school board voted out the superintendent.
Today, MDHR seems intent on duplicating
this failed social experiment throughout Minnesota. The department--- whose use of state law for this purpose
appears virtually unprecedented--- is
probably doing so because the federal government seems poised to back off on
enforcing Obama-era race-based discipline “guidance.”
In its campaign to transform Minnesota
schools, MDHR is operating under a shroud of secrecy. Reportedly, officials in
the 43 targeted districts and charters have not informed parents that their
schools are under investigation, most likely because MDHR has threatened to
initiate legal action against them unless they cooperate and because they fear
adverse publicity.
As a result, the parents and
communities affected will have no chance to examine the data that allegedly
expose their teachers as racists, or to influence the radical new approach to
discipline that MDHR is foisting on their children’s classrooms.
Is this how things are supposed to work
in our public schools?
The fact is, public scrutiny is vital
here, to expose the three deeply flawed premises on which MDHR’s race-focused
discipline campaign is based.
The department’s first faulty premise
is that teachers, not students, are to blame for the racial discipline
gap. MDHR bureaucrats’ key (if unspoken)
assumption is that students with widely different socioeconomic and family
backgrounds--- as groups--- all misbehave in school at the same
rate. Relying on this premise, the
department attributes any significant group disparities to discriminatory
teachers and discipline practices, by default.
But consider this: Nationally, white boys are suspended at more
than twice the rate of Asian and Pacific Islander boys, while boys in general
are suspended much more often than girls.
Is this because teachers are biased
against white students and boys? Or does
it reflect real differences in conduct?
There are, in fact, real differences in
group behavior. For example, nationally,
young black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at 10 times the
rate of whites and Hispanics of the same age.
Behaviors that lead to criminal conduct are also likely to produce
school misconduct. Tragically, black
students’ discipline rate is most likely higher than other students because, on
average, they misbehave more.
A groundbreaking 2014 study by J. D.
Wright and colleagues in the Journal of Criminal Justice appears to confirm
this. Using the largest sample of school
aged children in the nation, the authors found that teacher bias plays no role
in the racial discipline gap, which is “completely accounted for by a measure
of the prior problem behavior of the student.”
What accounts for group differences in
behavior? A primary factor appears to
be profound demographic differences in family structure. Nationally, about 72 percent of
African-American and 66 percent of Native American children are born out of
wedlock, as opposed to 29 percent and 17 percent of white and Asian children,
respectively. Young people who grow up
without fathers are far more likely than their peers to engage in antisocial
behavior, as voluminous research makes clear.
MDHR’s flawed premise is that black
student’s higher suspension rates give rise to a “school to prison pipeline,”
which reduces their chances for future success.
Lindsey told Minnpost that kids who miss school aren’t as likely as
other kids to learn or graduate, and so are more likely to land in prison.
But the problem of missed school days
goes far beyond days missed for suspensions.
Chronic absenteeism, defined in Minnesota as missing more than 40
percent of school days, is linked with poverty and home conditions. In 2015-16, 37 percent of Native American and
21 percent of black students were chronically absent, compared to 11 percent
and 8 percent of white and Asian students, respectively.
If MDHR is serious about keeping young
people out of prison, it should focus its efforts here.
MDHR’s third flawed premise is that
discipline policies that focus more on race than on students’ actual conduct
somehow benefit poor and minority children.
In fact, the greatest victims of such
policies are the children--- many poor
and minority--- who come to school ready
to learn. The classroom disorder these
policies promote can add insurmountable obstacles to their quest for an
education.
Race-based policies also harm the student
troublemakers they are intended to help.
Often, these young people aren’t taught self-control or respect for
others at home. Their only chance to
master vital social skills is at an orderly school. But if instead they learn that bad behavior
and disrespect for authority carry no adverse consequences, how can they ever
hope to hold a job or become productive citizens?
The misguided approach to discipline
that MDHR is foisting on Minnesota schools has a dismal track record, from Los Angeles to New York.
In 2014, for example, New York’s
attorney general compelled the Syracuse Public Schools to reduce racial
disparities in suspensions.
Violence quickly mushroomed out of
control as behavior standards were lowered.
In 2015, a teachers' union survey found that the district’s teachers and
staff felt “helpless” to combat it.
Two-thirds of respondents reported worrying about their safety, 57
percent had been threatened and 36 percent had been physically assaulted--- shoved, kicked, head-butted, choked or
bitten. Many described daily harassment
in the form of crude and abusive language, frequently racial or sexual in
nature.
In 2017, after a Syracuse high school
student stabbed a teacher twice, the Onondaga County district attorney issued
an urgent call for reversal of the 2014 disciplinary policy changes.
Minnesota parents should demand to know
whether MDHR has targeted their school district or charter school. Other schools will also be under pressure to
alter their disciplinary policies to avoid finding themselves in MDHR’s
crosshairs.
Only prompt citizen action can avoid
potentially disastrous consequences for all of Minnesota’s children.
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