school to prison – RI Future

June 5, 2015

RI schools over-suspend students with disabilities

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Students with disabilities across Rhode Island are suspended from school at rates more than twice as high, on average, as their representation in the student body, an ACLU of Rhode Island report has found. These disproportionate suspension rates, like those that impact racial minorities, begin in the earliest grades, and are often for low-risk behavioral issues that could be addressed in other ways. During the 2013-2014 school year, every school district in Rhode Island and all but two charter schools over-suspended students with disabilities.

The ACLU report, “Suspended Education: The Over-Suspension of Students With Disabilities in Rhode Island,” found that students with disabilities comprised 32.90% of all suspensions between 2005 and 2014. This is more than twice what is expected, given that they made up just 16.11% of the student body population on average during that time. The report further noted that students with disabilities are over-suspended at the highest rates when they are in elementary school—a particularly vulnerable time when they should be receiving much-needed individualized support, not punishment.

Among our other findings:

Despite nationwide recommendations that suspensions carry significant risks and should be used only for the most serious infractions, suspensions of students, and students with disabilities, are often issued for low-risk, behavioral infractions. Further, nearly 36% of suspensions for such offenses over the years studied were given to children with disabilities, 2.23 times the rate expected given their representation in the population.
Twenty school districts and eight charter schools suspended students with disabilities at rates twice, or more than twice, as high as would be expected during the 2013-2014 school year alone.
Suspension disparities against students with disabilities begin, and are at their highest, in elementary school. Thirty-eight percent of suspensions for elementary school students were issued to students with disabilities, 2.58 times higher than expected given their representation in the population. High school students with disabilities were suspended nearly twice as often as expected.
The labels assigned to the behavior of even the youngest students call into question the overreliance on suspensions for normal childhood roughhousing. During the 2013-2014 school year, 266 suspensions for fighting or assault were issued to students between kindergarten and the second grade; 21.05% of these suspensions were issued to students with disabilities.
Altogether, 14.45% of students with disabilities were suspended at least once between 2005 and 2014, compared to just 6.65% of students without disabilities.

From the report: “The figures suggest that, while students with disabilities are supposed to be given myriad services, they are being removed from school not because of their behavior, but because of the failure of schools to meet their needs. Worse, they are being disproportionately suspended for relatively minor, and often subjective, infractions.”

In the report, we offer a series of recommendations to keep students in the classroom, including passage of legislation currently before the General Assembly that would limit the use of out-of-school suspensions for only the most serious offenses. We further recommended that the Rhode Island Department of Education and local school districts examine their data to identify disparities in the suspension rates of students with disabilities, develop plans to reduce those disparities, and investigate alternative evidence-based disciplinary methods.

Suspensions have for too long been a first response to children’s behavior instead of a last resort. That Rhode Island’s children with disabilities are suspended even when federal law requires they be given particular behavioral supports only underscores the overreliance on suspensions to address the behavior that comes with being a child. Children with disabilities deserve better than a ‘troublemaker’ label and a trip down the school-to-prison pipeline, and Rhode Island must work to do better by them.

May 5, 2015

Racial disparities in school suspensions reach 10 year high

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The reported today that racial disparities in suspensions at Rhode Island’s schools had “reached their highest rates in a decade last year,” according to new report from the RI ACLU called Blacklisted: 2013-2014.

It found that white students experienced “a ten-year low in suspensions during the 2013-2014 school year” even as the combined suspension rate for Hispanic, black and Native American students was at its highest level.”

The ACLU press release presents the following findings:

Black students were suspended from school more than twice as often as would be expected based on their representation in the student body population. Hispanic students were suspended more than one-and-a-half times as often as expected, the highest rate in a decade, while white students experienced a ten-year low.

Black girls were nearly four times more likely than white girls to be suspended, including for minor, vague offenses like “disorderly conduct” and “disrespect.”

Black elementary school students were suspended at a rate nearly three times the rate expected given their representation in the population, while white elementary school students were suspended just half as often as expected.

The racial disparities in discipline are statewide: 24 school districts and two charter schools suspended black students at rates disproportionately higher than their representation in the student body, while 21 districts and two charter school disproportionately suspended Hispanic students.

Despite an increasing consensus nationwide that suspensions should be reserved as discipline only in very serious circumstances, more than half of all suspensions were issued for “Disorderly Conduct” or “Insubordination/Disrespect.”

This is the third such report from the ACLU in three years, said Hillary Davis, policy associate at the RI ACLU. She is hopeful that legislation introduced in the General Assembly will begin to address the problem. If passed, House Bill 5383 will prevent out of school suspensions for all but the most serious offenses. The bill also specifies that each school district must review its suspensions annually with an eye towards reducing racial disparities.

Jordan Seaberry of the Univocal Legislative Minority Advisory Commission said that our state “cannot deny the relationship between juvenile suspension and adult imprisonment.” We have “allowed a shadow justice system to take place within our schools” and “built a culture of suspensions” that plays into racial biases.

Receiving a suspension increases the likelihood of dropping out of school. “If you have less than a high school diploma,” said Dr. Danni Ritchie, a family practitioner and public health researcher, “it is predictive of your having poor health outcomes.” Having an advanced degree can “increase your life expectancy by about 12 years.”

“Research has shown that children of color, especially African Americans, tend to be seen as older and less innocent and less entitled to some of the conceptions of childhood than… their white counterparts,” said Dr. Ritchie.

Stephanie Geller, policy analyst for RI Kids Count, said that research indicates that being suspended even once by ninth grade “results in a 2-fold rate of dropping out” of school.

Geller would prefer to see schools adopt policies centered on restorative justice, as is currently the case in Central Falls. Geller also wants to make sure that a law passed in 2012 that prohibited schools from suspending students for absenteeism is being enforced.

“Why do so many of us silently assume that so many black kids are insubordinate and therefore unteachable?” asked Dr. Marie Hennedy. Hennedy, a teacher, mother and grandmother, maintained that “students should only be suspended for incredibly dangerous, serious, dangerous reasons.”

Karen Feldman, executive director of Young Voices, said that, “We are not creating school environments that welcome our students in.” If a child is late to school or not fast enough in obeying a teacher’s instructions they are given detention. If they skip detention, they are suspended, said Feldman.

When students are suspended, educators need to fill out forms with a detailed explanation of the student’s offense, said Feldman, adding that “we need to have restorative practices in all our schools.”

“In my world,” said Rev. Donald Anderson, of the Rhode Island Council of Churches, “we have a word for inaction when there is a clear moral imperative to act. That word is sin. And sin has consequences.”

Martha Yaeger of the American Friends Service Committee told a story of encountering “an amazing young woman” at a community organization in the middle of the day.

Wondering why she wasn’t in school, Yaeger asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I got suspended.”

“Why?”

“Cuz my teacher told me to do something that was wrong and I asked her why.”

The “amazing young woman” was sent to the principal’s office and was suspended for a week. While suspended, she received zeroes in all her coursework, setting her “back academically for the rest of the year.”

March 16, 2015March 16, 2015

Students say school suspension bill reduces racist results

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A bill that seeks to interrupt the school to prison pipeline seemed to be initially met with some resistance among lawmakers in the House Health, Education and Welfare Committee. After all, this same committee, under the leadership of Joseph McNamara and Grace Diaz, shepherded legislation to deal with student suspensions four years ago.

“This is an area where we have been successful,” said Rep. McNamara with justifiable pride, pointing out that he and Rep. Diaz successfully passed legislation affecting students that were truant.

“Passing that bill,” continued McNamara, “decreased the suspension rate in Rhode Island by, I believe, 30 percent.” Students can only be suspended, under this law, if they are a threat to other student’s safety, or engage in persistent behavior that impedes the ability of others to learn.

Though overall suspensions may be down, racial bias in meting out suspensions is still a problem. A recent report by the RI ACLU has shown that black students are “suspended from school with record high disparity” while Hispanic students “remain severely over-suspended at some of the highest rates observed over nine years.”

In response to this data, Hilary Davis, of the RI ACLU has outlined a series of actions to help combat this alarming trend, and Rep John Lombardi, has advanced House bill 5383.

Lombardi’s bill is a good start in that it “directs school superintendents to review and respond to discipline data where there is an unequal impact on students based on race, ethnicity, or disability,” and would prevent “out of school suspensions unless student’s conduct meets certain standards.”

The data alone might not have been enough to convince the General Assembly to act on Lombardi’s bill. That’s why the testimony of four students representing Young Voices was so important and persuasive. One after another these young students reported to the committee members what they had personally witnessed.

Grace, a junior at Classical High School in Providence, knows from her own experience that students are routinely suspended for “non-violent behaviors or even for simply being late to school,” actions prohibited under the law passed four years ago. She told of a student who was suspended for being disruptive in class, even though he never presented any threat to the other students. “We all felt sorry for him,” she says, “but there was nothing we could do.”

Students, say the representatives of Young Voices, are routinely suspended for using cell phones, coming late to class, disrespecting the teachers, or swearing. Kendall, a junior at Juanita Sanchez, made an excellent point when she said, “When kids see that their punishment does no correlate with their offense, they become angry, knowing that kids who do egregious acts are held to the same punishment. It is simply unfair. The fact is that schools are not following the law and are finding loopholes around it.”

February 20, 2015February 21, 2015

ACLU calls on state leaders to address racial disparities

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The Rhode Island ACLU chapter is calling on state leaders to “examine policies, practices and procedures that lead to discriminatory treatment of black Rhode Islanders” and issued a new report that the civil liberties activists say “offers a brief but systematic examination of racial disparities in Rhode Island, and how those interconnected disparities can lead to a lifetime of unequal treatment.”

You can read the full report here. It examines school discipline, juvenile justice, traffic stops, arrests and prison representation.

“This report demonstrates what many have known for a long time to be true: life in Rhode Island is different, depending on your skin color,” said Hillary Davis, an ACLU policy associate. “It is our hope that this report will no longer allow these experiences to be discounted and ignored, and that Rhode Island’s leaders will come together to address the problem of racial disparities in Rhode Island before a larger crisis occurs.”

The report calls for six actions to be taken:

Passage by the General Assembly of legislation limiting the use of out-of-school suspensions and requiring school districts to look seriously at their racial disparities in meting out discipline and coming up with concrete ways to reduce them.
Passage by the General Assembly of strong, comprehensive racial profiling legislation that seriously confronts racial disparities in traffic stops and searches.
Passage of legislation – already enacted in a few states – to require the preparation of “racial impact statements” prior to the consideration of bills that would have the effect of increasing the prison population.
An acknowledgement by state and municipal leaders that racial disparities are a significant problem that demands action.
A commitment by state and municipal leaders, and particularly law enforcement personnel, to regularly examine policies, practices and procedures which appear to have a disparate impact on racial minorities, and to develop ways to minimize those disparities.
The annual adoption of specific and measurable plans of action by school districts and law enforcement agencies to address the racial disparities documented in this report and in other data.