Zero Tolerance Policies In Schools

The film Including Samuel discusses the difficulties of inclusion. The film follows several families and their experiences with inclusion. Each person presented in the film experienced a different version of inclusion, and with their experience arose diverse challenges. Including Samuel follows people varying in age with a variety of disabilities. The documentary successfully established the difficulties of inclusion within an educational institution. It not only included challenges with inclusion in an educational setting, but in everyday life and family settings.

Zero-tolerance policies are policies that have been adapted in work places, communities, and, most frequently, schools. Depending on how certain schools are run and who they are run by, zero-tolerance policies could be positive and helpful or negative and harmful. Many people wonder are these policies really effective in reducing crime and creating safer environments in schools like lawmakers claim these policies are doing; most of the opponents to zero-tolerance policies believe that the policies are just cruel punishments that add to the problems that already exist in our schools and communities. There are obviously those who feel that the policies do exactly what they say they do; advocates for zero-tolerance policies

The United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights shows that there has been a constant overrepresentation of minority children in what is known as special education courses. The majority of this overrepresentation occurs for African American children. Unfortunately this has been occurring for years, during the 1980’s African American students only made up sixteen percent of the total school population make up, however they represented thirty-eight percent of children that were in classes for students that were in need of special education courses. Forty years later this is still occurring, there is still an overrepresentation of African American children in special education courses, which leads to an overrepresentation of African

Segregated schools ended in 1954. At least that’s what students were told to believe. So many working class students have been affected in almost every aspect of their life, such as academically, mentally and emotionally. There no longer have to be two completely different types of schools for whites and for blacks, in order to see that segregation is still a huge part of the school system today. Economic segregation in schools has impacted many working class students in a very negative way. These students don’t get equal opportunities as those students attending elite schools. Authors Toni Cade Bambara and Jonathon Kozol have written vivid examples on how working class students have been impacted by segregation in school.

In the United States’ current political climate, “racism” is a term thrown around so often that it almost begins to lose its original definition. The same can be said when discussing and analyzing the success rate of minority students in higher education. People are inclined to jump to the conclusion that a faculty member or institution is inherently racist instead of looking at all of the factors involved in a student’s success. The three main factors that I will be covering over the course of this essay are school tuition rates, Affirmative Action policies, and how schools handle discipline. While there are cases of inarguable racism within higher education, an in-depth analysis of the factors stated above will prove that “racism” is not

Although, discriminatory discipline overtly plays a significant role in pushing youth particularly students of color out of the classrooms and into the pipeline, this shines a light on the fact that our public school system is failing our children regardless of race. While a faulty public school system can not foster students educational development nor prepare students to be responsible citizens who lead economically and socially productive lives. Therefore, stopping the bleeding of school-to-prison pipeline is merely a prelude to a much larger social justice challenge—the right to quality education that constructs the well-being for all.

There is an ongoing abuse of the zero-tolerance policy that continues to affect the lives of minority girls in schools in the public and private school sector. The current literature supports data that show that minorities are severely impacted by the policies. However, there is a gap in the literature that addresses the magnitude of how minority girls are impacted by these policies. Furthermore, due to the zero-tolerance policies, cultural differences are not even considered. Due to a lack of a universally accepted definition of zero tolerance, there are only estimates of the frequency of enforcement (Daly, Hildenbrand, Haney-Caron, Goldstein, Galloway, and DeMatteo, 2016). The arrest of students results in unintended consequences

Daniel J. Losen wrote a policy brief called “Discipline Policies, Successful Schools and Racial Justice.” This piece is a compilation of reviews conducted by researchers that address racial disparities in schools regarding disciplinary policies. Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, delivered a speech that suggested “that students with disabilities and Black students, especially males, were suspended far more than their White counterparts.” For example, research conducted in 2006 found that “over 28% of Black male middle school students had been suspended at least once, nearly three times the rate for White males.” () Another key point is that law makers and school officials should keep schools safe while using alternative practical methods

Throughout my years, there was only one Black student named Sam attending the institution. He didn’t graduate with the class because he had disappeared by the third grade. The next time I saw Sam around was a few years later, sitting on the red steps behind my elementary school with some neighborhood “thugs” that sat around smoking and cutting school all the time. The circumstances in which he was placed were all positive and worked in his favor, but the choice for him to make the best out of it was all up to whether he wanted to be that one in a million or to become a statistic. The teachers encouraged critical thinking and thinking abstractedly so you could formulate your own solutions rather than follow the orthodox method. Next, I attended an inner city Junior High School. I was not zoned there; I was accepted through their gifted program, but this only comprised a small fraction of the school. Coming from a school in a good neighborhood to one that was subpar was a huge leap, I immediately noticed the vast differences in the quality of education. My junior high school was mostly composed of Blacks, Hispanics, and a small percentage of White. In Segregation Prominent in Schools, Study Finds, by Motoko Rich, the statistics show that “43 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of blacks attend schools where fewer than 10 percent of their classmates are white (Motoko, 2012).” I was placed into the

America is the so called “melting pot” of the world because it encompasses the diversity of ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, and traditional values. The American Dream is defined by equal rights, racial justice and the freedom to succeed through a variety of opportunities with the support of education as a imperative structure. Sadly, due to the mistreatment and isolation for many years, African Americans were prompted to fight for the unity of school systems. Many heroic leaders endlessly advocated to bring cultures together and create an integrated school system with the belief all children will go to school amongst each other no matter their skin color. In Brown v. Board of Education, the court’s decision ended with bringing together schools and integrating them to become equal. Unfortunately, still to this day, some schools continue to remain segregated even after all the courageous activists who passionately fought to bring peace amongst all races. Jonathan Kozol, an educator and activist who challenges equal opportunities in schools systems, has written many books based off his experience with children in many inner-city schools. In the article, “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” Kozol displays the ongoing issues of segregation amongst schools who continue to isolate African Americans and whites from going to school together.

The topic of zero tolerance rings a bell in the political world when it comes to racial injustice. Research shows that black students are 2.6 times as likely to be suspended as White students (Teske). This social injustice for students of color does not get any easier with zero tolerance polices. If anything, zero tolerance causes more racial discrimination and injustice.

Social exclusion has been noted to be a subtle phenomenon, that often goes unnoticed, and when it is noticed, often the individual who is being excluded receives the blame and not the environment or those in it (Howarth, 2006). In educational settings, people of color are made to feel as if they do not belong, either knowingly or unknowingly (Howarth, 2006). Often enough, schools and universities think that discussing racial exclusion is either of no use, outdated, or already taken care of because of the measures that are currently in place by their administration, but they could not be more wrong (Kohli, 2008). Critical Race Theory (CRT) has often been ignored when it comes to analyzing higher education because the

The zero-tolerance policy has become a major national concern and so this argument has been brought forward to state houses and school districts. The Supportive School Discipline Initiative was created in 2011 by Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder in order to prevent the continuation of the school-to-prison pipeline. “By bringing together government, law enforcement, academic, and community leaders, the goal was to ensure fair discipline policies which are not obstacles to future growth and achievement” (51). As pointed out by Attorney General Holder that has wishes schools are only educational doorway opportunities. A study was created and sampled a Texas middle school. “The Breaking Schools’ Rules study revealed that excluding students was an extreme yet common practice, with 54% of all students experiencing at least one in-school suspension and 31% of all students spending on average two days at home at least once in their school career” (51). This also discovered the increased five times and three times more likelihood of a dropout from students who received exclusion from school. From the Texas middle school study it was found out that 97% of student exclusion were done privately and targeted students of color. It has been understood that defiance has become the biggest contributor to

The inclusion of students who are deaf refers to their being educated within a classroom of students with normal hearing. This concept of inclusion differs from mainstreaming in that the latter may refer to a variety of degrees of contact with hearing students, while in inclusion a deaf student is placed in a classroom with hearing students. Before 1975, although attempts were made to educate students who were deaf in regular schools, about 80% of students who were deaf in Zimbabwe were being served in special schools (Cohen, 1995). Education for all called for the education of all children appropriately in the ''least restrictive environment''. Although the law resulted in some students

College applicant are being selected by more of what's on the outside then what's on the inside. These people are denied by certain workforces based on ethnicity within the repeat of history. College performance would be lower using proxy-based affirmative action than using traditional affirmative action. (Long 178) Most Caucasian universities gradually feel pressure to admit more black students. Education for minority students has continued to be secretly separate and unequal. Currently now in this generation two-third of minority students still attend schools that are mainly minority, most of them located in cities, and funded well below those in the suburban districts. The U.S educational system is one of the most irregular in the world, and students routinely receive dramatically different learning options based on their social status. (Darling-Hammond 1)