Introduction
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
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According to Ward (2014) zero-tolerance policies may have outlived its original intent and are now doing more harm than good. What started out to be a policy intended to provide a safe place for students evolved into an umbrella punishment for any type of misbehavior including those that are not criminal. As a result, minority students have been affected most by these policies, and they often contribute to propelling these students into the juvenile justice system, often for status offenses. Ward (2014) cites the Department of Education as reporting Black students are three times more likely to expelled or suspended nationally. The shooting of Trevon Martin was indirectly related to an extended suspension from school. The teen was not killed during the school hour but he was staying with his father as a result of the suspension (Hoffman, 2014). Many articles and literature address these issues; however, there is a gap in the literature that explains how minority girls are affected which in turn overlook solutions to the problem. Daly et al. (2016) indicate that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 provided incentives for schools to eliminate specific students so that the school’s standardized test score results will improve. According to Thompson (2016) unintended consequences rose out of federal incentives for students to do well on test scores since the federal bench marks needed to be met to receive funding. When schools use the zero-tolerance policy as a way to eliminate lower scores, minority girls are affected by these
In the 1980’s and through the 1990’s crime rates were beginning to rise and schools began to crack down on violence, disorder, and weapons in the classroom. There was a term used to justify the punishments given to children who were misbehaving, Zero Tolerance, the official definition being the refusal to accept undesirable misbehavior, typically by strict and uncompromising application of the law. Retro Report is a website that publishes documentaries on major new events and shares them to a digital audience. On October 2nd, 2016 they released a video describing the Zero Tolerance policy in depth and depicting the impact it had on schools where the policy was enforced. There were witnesses to the effect of Zero Tolerance speaking in the video, speaking against the policy and how it had an overall negative outcome.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.
This article examines Seacrest High School that had major violent episodes between Asian-American and African-American students. While trying to decide how to deal with the violence and school safety, the other components of the school went by the wayside. All of this was chronicled in the media and an ensuing court order forced the school district to take measures that secured the safety of the students that attended the school. Although not done on purpose, the subsequent result was a neglect of academics and the overall school culture. The focus on safety, created during a chaotic approach to school improvement, led to a loss of focus of content knowledge, critical thinking skills, social-emotional support for students, and moral reasoning.
McCarter describes thoroughly the consequences STPP has on the nation’s school-age youth, including but not limited to increased exposure the criminal justice system, and gives solutions that schools can implement that will hopefully limit the overwhelming amount of students coming in contact with the STPP. The article proves that zero tolerance policies are not conducive to a safe school environment and does not foster a safe learning climate for
Carnoy, Loeb, and Smith (2003) found a weakness in the relationships between TAKS scores and other outcomes such as high school graduation rates and scores on college entrance exams. Other researchers (Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey, & Steecher, 2000) analyzed increases in scores in Texas on the NAEP, increases that they state political leaders attributed to the accountability system, and found that Texas score improvements in mathematics at grade 8 are not significantly different from those of other states that did not have strong accountability systems in place. In fact their data show evidence that the achievement gap between white students and underrepresented minorities actually increased. Some argue that the data show that the accountability program actually negatively impacts schools that were already academically behind before the implementation of the accountability system (Fassold,
The literature review clearly has shown that there is a phenomenon called School to Prison, Schoolhouse to Jailhouse, or Public Education to Prison Pipeline. Therefore, Jeremy Thompson (2016) says, “Zero-tolerance policies in schools result in high suspension rates and expulsion rates among students in general, but disproportionately affect minority students, especially African-Americans because students who have been suspended or expelled are more likely than not to end up in the Criminal Justice
Is it fair that an African American man is sentenced up to life in prison for possession of drugs when Brock Turner is sentenced to only 14 years, later to be reduced to six months for sexually assaulting an unconscious women. The judiciary system are believed to have a high african american incarceration rate as a result of discrimination. At a presidential debate on Martin Luther King Day, President Barack Obama said that “Blacks and whites are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, and receive very different sentences… for the same crime.” Hillary Clinton said the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more african americans proportionately than whites.”
In 2009, almost 45 percent of Latina females under five years old were enrolled in school while only 39 percent of Latino males were enrolled. When third grade comes around boys tend to be more than a year behind than girls in writing and reading skills. This shows that there is a serious problem within the education system because it isn’t right for males to be that far behind of what school districts want the kids to be taught. It gets even worse, boys that are colored are at a higher chance of experiencing great differences in consequences and punishments such as suspension and expulsion (Sáenz and Ponjuán, 2012). It saddens me to know that we live in the year 2015 and we still see people experience racism and inequality just because the color of his or her
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
These harsh policies cause children to distrust authority and as a result, they often become disengaged. “ Students who are suspended or expelled usually become disengaged from school and are at a greater risk for dropping out before graduation in other words zero tolerance forces exclusion upon students” (Findlay 119). Furthermore, these policies have caused students to drop out of school. By far the worst result of these policies is students committing suicide. “Zero tolerance policies in Fairfax County, Virginia, recently became the center of intense controversy when a successful student-athlete committed suicide after his removal from school for possession of a legal but controlled substance” (Skiba 29).
Everyday Braxton goes to school and does the correct things needed to be known as a good kid. One day a fight happens in front of Braxton and tries to break the fight up, instead of breaking the fight up, Braxton ends up being fought also. He is told that he is punished instead of helped. In the short run everyone thinks he will learn from his mistakes, in the long run, this is ran through all of the colleges and nobody accepts him, Braxton drops out. When it comes to student misbehavior, most schools have long practiced a basic system of crime and punishment, isolating the perceived “offender” through detention or suspension.
Children' brain are not fully developed yet. Thus, they do not realize the risks and consequences of their action. School-to-prison pipeline is arresting children for violating school rules. Statistic show drop out students are likely in jail for many reasons. Society need to focus more on education and spend less on prison, which can save thousands of taxpayers’ money.
However, with diversity comes inequalities that people of color face throughout their lives. A particular issue in the United States, specifically in education, is unequal opportunities and treatment in regard to race. Research shows that students from single-parent black families had a high chance of dropping out and participating in illicit behavior (Hallinan 54). While the issue of race is a complicated issue to breach for
It wasn 't just students and their parents - civil rights groups got involved, as did educators, and even juvenile judges sounded alarm at the number of young people who came out of zero tolerance with arrest records and other disciplinary millstones around their necks. The Obama Justice Department has also pressed school districts to find alternatives to arrest and expulsion. In recent years, Florida has indeed changed its approach - a 2009 amendment puts more discretion in the hands of school administrators to discipline students. A number of counties have also set up alternative sanctions for infractions - counseling, community service and other rehabilitative programs aim to help students improve their behavior, unlike expulsion, which left students to wander the streets during the day, fall behind on school work and get into even more trouble.
Russel Skiba states, “the use, and especially the overuse, of disciplinary removal carries with it and inherent risk of racial bias” (4).Advocates believe students who break zero-tolerance rules deserves their cruel punishment because no one made them disobey the rules but themselves. I believe lawmakers added silly rules that harm no one to the criteria of zero-tolerance and have ultimately contributed to the increase of crime. Getting rid of rules that target minority