Deborah Delisle, assistant secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the Education Department, argued before Congress that punishment is not equitable across races, and that far more black students are being suspended or expelled than white students (via CNS News):
We are alarmed by the disparities in disciplinary sanctions, particularly for students of color, students with disabilities, and male students. When African-American students are more than 3 ½ times as likely to be suspended or expelled as their white peers, or students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to receive out-of-school suspensions as their non-disabled peers, as they are today–it raises substantial concerns.
These concerns are reflected in our department’s enforcement efforts and in the stories we’ve heard from the field, which demonstrate too often that students face disciplinary actions on the basis of their race.
To give a specific example, an African-American Kindergartner was given a 5-day suspension for setting off a fire alarm while a white 9th grader in the very same district was suspended for 1 day for the same offense.
So to ensure that all students are treated equitably as a nation, we need a multi-pronged strategy that encourages educators to proactively monitor their discipline practices for disproportionality, assess for root causes where disproportionality exists, and engage in a broad-base community effort to develop an action plan to root out discrimination in the administration of discipline.
Looking at a macro view of statistics and deciding that we have a race problem in school discipline is stupid. Every situation is nuanced and different, and some schools have more whites than blacks and some more blacks than whites. This just doesn’t sound right at all. I’d even be willing to bet that there were other details in the example she gave that she’s omitting.
This is why we need to abolish the Dept. of Education and make education local again – at least to the states if not to the communities.
I can’t believe we have these people for another four years.