Progress Illinois: “A group of Chicago students is ratcheting up the pressure on state lawmakers to get behind “common-sense” school disciplinary policies.
Students leaders with Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) argue zero tolerance discipline policies have resulted in zero gains in schools across the state. Dozens of students demonstrated at the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) downtown headquarters Wednesday morning before marching to the Thompson Center to call on state officials, including Gov. Pat Quinn, to fix “broken” school discipline policies across Illinois. The group wants state lawmakers to set limitations on the use of disciplinary actions that eat up classroom learning time and have a disproportionate impact on students of color.
“Students want to stay in school. Students want to learn, and they want discipline (policies) that make sense,” said Jose Sanchez, VOYCE’s Safe Schools Consortium coordinator.
There were more than 272,000 out-of-school student suspensions at publicly-funded schools across Illinois in the 2011-2012 school year as well as some 2,400 expulsions and over 10,000 arrests, according to VOYCE’s data analysis of figures from the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights division.”
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