Black Students, Especially Boys, Face Much Harsher Discipline in Public Schools, Department of Education Report Claims

All this really tells us is how f-ked up our public discussion of public schools has become. I listened to Secretary Duncan at the clip and there's literally zero emphasis on personal and family responsibility, and then UC Berkeley's Professor Christopher Edley piles on about how "racist" this all is, because suspending students means they aren't in class to learn, blah, blah. No, these kids are getting disciplined in the first place because they're disrupting classes so badly that teachers can't teach and no one can learn. And that's why these students face "harsher" punishment, which when translated into the civil rights victimology jargon, is allegedly "disparate treatment," and then voila!, problem students' parents can sue the school, keep their kids in classes, and it all starts over again!

See the New York Times, "Black Students Face More Discipline, Data Suggests."

Althouse has a problem with the racial victimology here:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan characterized these findings as a "civil rights" problem, a violation of "the principle of equity at the heart of the American promise." But what is the real problem here? Is it believed that the teachers are racially prejudiced? Are there "white" (or middle class) standards of behavior that are used unfairly to judge and punish black children? Are there female standards of behavior that are used to judge boys?

These are very uncomfortable and disturbing statistics, and the solutions are far from clear. But certainly, you can't even out the numbers by going after white kids. There needs to be one set of rules and individuals must be treated as individuals, based on what they did. That's a "principle of equity" that cannot be abandoned.

More at the link.

And out of all of those cited above, I'll bet I'm the only one commenting from personal experience --- I have these kinds of students in my classes, and they're disciplined more often because they cause the most problems. It's not racist and it's not a civil rights problem. It's a breakdown of society problem.

PREVIOUSLY: "Realities of Higher Education in California," and "Volunteers at Community Colleges? Of Course Not, That Would Threaten the Power of California's Educational Administrative Commissariat."