Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/education-2/page/3/)
Sending kids who habitually miss school to court under the state’s 20-year truancy law hasn’t helped them stay in school. But a school-court-community effort in Spokane County is having impressive success.
We’re used to school shootings sparking Second Amendment debates, but recently a number of school administrators concerned about weapons have cracked down on another constitutional provision — the First Amendment — with troubling results.
I did not see my role, as I now do, as that of a guide to my students, there to see through their anger and rebellious attitudes, to learn about their lives and help them navigate their many difficulties. I failed to see that the classroom could be a place of coaching and learning from our mistakes, rather than a place of strict rules and external assessments.
School Resource Officers need to learn de-escalation techniques, crisis intervention and how to use their most effective tool — talking.
Latino and black students in California continue to be affected disproportionately by discipline that removes them from classrooms and often leaves them further behind academically.
A civil rights action on behalf of eight Raleigh, N.C.-area students reflects the debate over the "school-to-prison pipeline."
A veteran school police officer once told me, “If the only tool is a cop, than every problem becomes a crime.”
When he was a teenager growing up on the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles, Prophet Walker hardly seemed destined for success.
His mother was a heroin addict, and his neighborhood was filled with racial strife between blacks and Hispanics. But this is a story of hope and redemption, not despair, one that links the disparate worlds of Los Angeles’ ghetto neighborhoods with the glamour of Hollywood. It is the story of how Walker, with the help of movie producer Scott Budnick (“The Hangover”) and his own fierce determination, overcame his difficult circumstances and transformed his life into a success story.
The Obama administration Wednesday unveiled sweeping national school discipline guidelines urging schools to remove students from classrooms for disciplinary reasons only as a last resort. “Unfortunately, a significant number of students are removed from class each year – even for minor infractions of school rules – due to exclusionary discipline practices, which disproportionately impact students of color and students with disabilities,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote in a letter to school stakeholders nationwide. For example, civil rights data from the 2011-12 school year show that African-American youths without disabilities were more than three times as likely as their white peers without disabilities to be suspended or expelled. Students receiving special education services, who represented 12 percent of all students in the country, comprised 19 percent of students suspended in school, 20 percent receiving out-of-school suspensions and 23 percent of students involved in a school-related arrest. And more than half of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were Hispanic or African-American.
"The goal should be not to punish the kid but to make sure the kid is back in school, staying in school and doing what they need to do to graduate."