ABA Journal: “Students of color, particularly boys, are suspended and expelled at alarming rates, and zero-tolerance school discipline polices fail the communities they serve, said speakers on an panel sponsored by various ABA entities.
Black students are 3.5 times more likely to be expelled than white students, said Nancy Heitzeg, a St. Paul, Minn., critical race theory professor who teaches at St. Catherine University. She also noted that more than 70 percent of the students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were black or Latino. Many of them, she added, also had special needs addressed by Individualized Education Plans.
High-stakes testing also complicates the issue, Heitzeg said, and schools are using suspensions and expulsions to push out underperforming students. She noted the statistics at an ABA Midyear Meeting panel discussion titled “The School-to-Prison Pipeline: What are the Problems? What are the Solutions?” The Friday event was jointly sponsored by the ABA’s Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice, the Criminal Justice Section and the Counsel for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline.
“They say we should ‘Leave No Child Behind.’ The fact is we are leaving the majority of the nation’s future behind,” said Janette C. Wilson, another panelist. A lawyer, pastor and former teacher, Wilson spoke of a “Gestapo-type environment” at schools.”
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