Justice for Kids: Keeping Kids Out of the Juvenile Justice System

5. Looking for Air: Excavating Destructive Educational and Racial Policies to Build Successful School Communities

| 107 5 Looking for Air Excavating Destructive Educational and Racial Policies to Build Successful School Communities Theresa Glennon Americans invest public schools with their most fearsome anxieties and deepest longings for a better life. Our current theories of schooling reflect this great anxiety (Ravitch 2010). The 1960s and 1970s saw a focus on those whose educational opportunities had been denied or diminished by discriminatory policies, including racial segregation. By the 1980s, however , those who viewed the effects of this more inclusive vision of U.S. education as “dumbing down” the educational system demanded a “get tough” approach. Getting tough on education focused on standards, accountability based on standardized testing, and heightened consequences for misbehavior in school. At the same time, desegregation dropped off the national agenda, and racial justice concerns receded in importance (Urban and Wagoner 2009). The fallout of the get-tough approach is visible now in the high rates of students, disproportionately students of color, whose educational careers are derailed by harsh school discipline, high-stakes testing, and juvenile crime policies. As a result, African American boys are trapped at the intersection of educational policies based on harsh judgments, exclusion, a narrow definition of educational success, and a view of racism that denies their lived experiences. This leads inexorably to their disproportionate representation in the juvenile justice system. It is time to reverse course. The federal government must take the lead in redefining educational policy to accord with child development theories, employ positive behavioral interventions that build communities of trust rather than climates of suspicion, and strive to overcome the twin barriers of structural and interactive racism (Lawrence 2006). Federal leadership is needed to revise those education policies, such as zero tolerance school discipline policies and federally inspired testing requirements, and fully employ statutes to prevent race discrimination. 108 | Theresa Glennon The statistics are shocking: fewer than half of African American males successfully complete high school (Orfield et al. 2004); 19 percent are suspended each year (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights 2006); and many others are held back from promotion to the next grade or are unable to pass the tests required for graduation (Losen 2004). In some states, students may be excluded from the regular school environment and sent to alternative schools for disruptive youth (Education Law Center 2010). These approaches to school discipline often lead to criminal sanctions as well. This chapter focuses on those young African American males who are most affected by zero tolerance and high-stakes testing requirements. The chapter also investigates the federal government’s role in public education and the education of African American boys. First, it examines federal zero tolerance policies and high-stakes testing under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) that advance a view of education fundamentally at odds with the teachings of child development theory. It also examines the widespread use of zero tolerance school discipline policies and high-stakes testing requirements for promotion and graduation implemented by many states and many local school districts. These policies have led to excessively high rates of school exclusions and overreliance on standardized test scores to determine school success or failure. They have had an especially harsh impact on African American boys. Second, I examine the misguided direction in which the federal government has led us on the issue of race. It has narrowly defined racial equality as the absence of explicit racial classifications or discriminatory purpose and turned a blind eye to the devastating effects of racial disparities in the lives of its citizens. In so doing, the federal government has undermined and stigmatized efforts to address the structural, institutional, and interactive forms of racism that permeate the lives of racial and ethnic minorities, and in particular African American boys. It obscures the very racial stereotypes that may have made harsh school discipline and testing policies palatable to policymakers and the public. This chapter critically examines three approaches to addressing the stark racial disparities in school discipline and high-stakes testing. Efforts to date have failed in part because they have not acknowledged the multilayered and everyday nature of racism. Because they have been enacted without an adequate understanding of racism, many of these strategies have served only to reinforce rather than eliminate negative racial and ethnic stereotypes regarding educational attainment and behavior. One approach involves challenges to school actions under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Looking for...