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Subscribe to RSSBlack and Latino students across the United States are far more likely to be suspended than white students - and far less likely to have access to rigorous college-prep courses, according to a sweeping study released on Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.
The trove of data, collected from 72,000 schools serving 85 percent of the nation's students, revealed tremendous disparities in the public school experiences of minority and white students.
Some of the most striking findings involved discipline: one in five African-American boys - and one in 10 African-American girls - was suspended from school during the study period, the 2009-10 school year.
Overall, African-American students are 3-1/2 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers. And 70 percent of students arrested or referred to law enforcement for disciplinary infractions are black or Latino, the study found. Other researchers have found that students who are repeatedly punished by being barred from campus are far more likely to drop out.
Academic opportunities also vary widely by race. Among high schools that serve predominately Latino and African-American students, just 29 percent offer a calculus class and only 40 percent offer physics. In some school districts, those numbers are even more glaring. In New York City, for instance, just 10 percent of the high schools with the highest black and Latino enrollment offer Algebra II.
Low income schools trying to retain good teachers may have come up with a solution: teacher apprentices. NBC's Thanh Truong reports.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was careful to say that his department is "not alleging overt discrimination in some or all of these cases."
But he said he hoped the data would prompt soul-searching as educators across the nation confront inequities.
"In the big picture, this is really about self-analysis," Duncan said. He urged teachers and administrators to "look in the mirror, at the good, the bad and the ugly, and figure out what's going on."
According to The New York Times, Duncan said education was "the civil rights of our generation."
"The undeniable truth is that the everyday education experience for too many students of color violates the principle of equity at the heart of the American promise."
Enduring stereotypes
That may be easier said than done, said Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The data hint uncomfortably at crude assumptions and enduring stereotypes about "who should be in school, who should be preparing to go to college, who can learn" - and "many of those beliefs stem back from before you or I were born," Welner said. "That's hard to change."
Other studies over the decades have found similar racial disparities in student discipline and academic opportunity. But the new report, which Duncan is scheduled to release today in an event at Howard University, is more detailed and comprehensive than most. (The data will be published online here.)
It breaks down the national data district by district and school by school. And it looks at racial disparities in realms as varied as access to pre-kindergarten programs; success in Advanced Placement courses; and the use of physical restraints on students with disabilities.
The release of such wide-ranging data "is very important for is if we're to gain the national will to overcome our aversion to looking at race," said Russell Skiba, who directs the Equity Project at Indiana University's School of Education. "It's tough to talk about race. It's awkward. But this data gives us a bit of a road map."
The Times reported that the Department of Education has been gathering data on civil rights and education since 1968, but that the Bush administration suspended the project in 2006. It has now been reinstated and for the first time has been collecting data on referrals to law enforcement, which sheds more light on an increasing concern by civil rights advocates that there is a track from schools into prisons for many students of color.
The report, known as the Civil Rights Data Collection, seeks to prod change by calling attention to districts that have used what Duncan called "best practices" to reduce inequities.
It points, for instance, to a high school in Montgomery County, Maryland, that serves a largely black and Hispanic population - and enrolls those students in physics at an impressive rate. The report also highlights an elementary school in an impoverished neighborhood of Dade County, Florida that enrolls nearly 17 percent of its black and Hispanic students in a program for gifted students, more than triple the national rate.
Duncan said he hoped administrators in other districts would ask how those schools had achieved their success, then follow suit. "There are some encouraging things in this data," he said. "Frankly, there are some very troubling things as well. But the only way forward is to know the truth."
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I am sure glad that we are paying the US dept of Education to actually come out and tell us that their are behavior differences between the species. You could most likely look at the US Crime index that classifies criminal arrests as a percentage of population related to the specis and come up with very close numbers. Instead of spending millions at the US Dept of Education for these Radical Civil studies, (put together by the DOE employees that are trying to justify thier worthless job titles and pay. Why not work on how to correct behavior problems at the grade school level before they become a general population problem? These social misfits get punished, in all races, and always will. We must have general order in our society.
i thought we are all the same species...homo sapiens? We can argue about behavior..in the fifties..Plessy vs. Fergusen..seperate but equal.. we know that was far from the case.. Get rid of tenure...biggest problem with the Department of Education..Imagine if tenure was the practice in the Department of Defense.. where would we be.. the Atom Bomb.. ?
Not surprising considering this country was founded exclusively on racism/ethnocentric beliefs and the white man catering to his own kind. The races that "suck up" the best and become a monetary symbol to whites , offer the least resistance and assimilate easily within white society. Races that don't conform to the white ideals become the societal outcasts. It's like that old saying, "It's not what you know, it's who you know," which is not hard to view in American society (white majority hovers around 67%), it can't be ignored how whites cater to their own kind in hiring practices, overall college admissions, and housing practices (redlining) as well as educational opportunities and even disciplinary tendencies, ranging from elementary school expulsions and expensions through to the judicial process. If Lindsay Lohan and Casey Anthony was black both would have been incarcerated long long ago and for life. In white society, "If your white, it's alright, but if you're black, we'll pull the trigger back."
Your comment has to make us wonder who are the real racists.
OJ would like to have a word with you Al.
Ya mean that kids from the 'hood' have more discipline/crime problems than kids from suburbia?
This is shocking. Just shocking, I tell you.
Of course, any moron alive knows this without millions of dollars in data collection by the government.
There are some really bad(Racist) teachers in those schools just as in society. Blacks and Lationos are usually put on one side of the fence and the asians and whites on the other side of the fence. Most of the teachers and the administrators are white so who do you think is going to win ?
Teachers not only discipline minorities harsher they also scew the grades. For example a Latino might get a 'C' for a paper he wrote while a white student will get an 'A' for the exact same paper. This is not always the case but it does happen. Sometimes the Whites and Asians are pitted agains the Blacks and Latinos who are seen as more aggressive and dangerous. Also, Blacks and Latinos who stray into the Scientific courses are hit with even more obstacles than their white/asian counterparts.
This is a fact of life in the USA and cuts acrross most public and private schools. No sense trying to sugar cooated and make excuses such as single parent households. This started a long long time ago and I don't see any drastic changes happening any time soon.
What you just did there was made up a bunch of things as a way to make an excuse. You really believe in elementary school the teachers are working their hardest to segregate and suppress blacks and latinos? Are you really that silly to believe that?
All people like you want is to make excuses for parents who arent doing their jobs, thats what this article is about (though in msnbc fashion, neglect to actually say the truth). Be responsible for yourself and your own children, schools are baby-sitters, people like you are the reason liberals think the government has to make decisions for everyone, ebcause we just arent intelligent enough to do it for ourselves.
Another skewed biased article of poor journalism by MSN. Why they even let them put this junk out as the truth is beyond belief.
Interesting...
Caucasians will NEVER identify any issue as racism.
Most comments regarding the analysis of "the analysis" seem to come from Caucasians who will never look at the numbers and analyse it from a perspective othere than their own.
this is why those who do statistics and gather data process in the information in a way to take out bias and opinion. The facts are the facts, whether this couch scientists on this comment stream believe it or not.
Furthermore, if you want to deal with emotion, deal with this.....
The master will NEVER admit to his sin. He will live the sin, lie about the sin and then expect no consequence for the sin. BUT ADMISSION OF THE SIN. will NEVER HAPPEN.
That is why race relations will never get better. Jesus said "REPENTENCE IS THE FIRST STEP TO SALVATION".
We repentence happens regarding race and the way America was founded on the backs of a race of people, then we can talk. Other than that, none of the opinions of Whites regarding the disinfranchisment of PEOPLE OF COLOR will be valid, honest or substantiated.
Most Caucasians will NEVER acknowledge racism.
So using statistics you could take the information gathered and come to the conclusion that blacks and latinos are more likely the be unruly and much less likely to learn in school.
Thats how statistics work, you can take the same information and come to multipile conclusions.
What would you like caucasians to do exaclty? Are blacks and latinos to ignorant and not capable of learning how to teach their own children how to act in public and how to learn in school? That seems to be what youre telling us, to me thats more racists than my conclusion that maybe its bad parenting. Take responsibility for yourself, stop listening to the liberal mantra of the government will take care of you because you cant do it yourself, they wont and shouldnt have to.
I noticed they enrolled these students in the advanced studies but how are they doing?sorry that answer would not supplement the agenda; would it ?
A truly ignorant, or a truly prejudice individual would create an integrateed society. Integration deteriorates, and destroys all races, except those who are segregated.
@Therealtruth2u, Then why do European Americans force African American, Asian American Hispanic and Latino monikers on other minorities. They too are American many by birth yet the only ones considered Americans are of the mythical white race. Many Latinos and Hispanics are caucasian yet not considered "white".Therefore Beanathome like most thinking people has determined that white applies only to people of northern european heritage.
Think about this for a minute folks. There is a 25 year lag in time before most people graduate college. So in turn this means, the new teachers are of the mind set of what influences they grew up with. Racism is a learned behavior. Taught by parents, peers, and the media. All of us will not see eye to eye until this behavior stops. Plain and simple.
These "studies" are generally done by white people who are looking to extort money from the government under the guise of civil rights. They would like to create a program, of some kind, to fix the supposed inequality within our class system. They have the free/reduced lunch program nailed down where the schools get federal funding based on the number of children on the program. If they can get this discipline program on the books it will be a federal money windfall for the schools with the worst discipline problems. What they really have is a bad case of white guilt.
same old crap you have heard for years
Most of the comments hit the nail on the head. Students are disciplined based on their behaviour period. It has absolutely nothing to do with their race.
Another article trying to make an issue of racism where it doesn't exist.
Uh, could it be that black and hispanic students are more into causing trouble or not buckling down and studying? What I see in the streets & malls are many of them walking around with attitude & pants on the ground acting like they have no sence or disipline at all. Why is everyone so afraid of telling it like it is? Half the black children come from single family homes, & half of them do not even know who their fathers are. Yes it is sad, but it certainly seems to be the trend only amoung certain racial groups. Face it....the melting pot did not work. Our cities are no longer safe places & our economy is being drained to pay for "social" services that only produce more people that rely on them. Education grants are used to boost quotas instead of funding the students most likly to benifit by them. Sad state of affairs and quickly leading to economic & moral destruction of a once great Nation.
Minority students face more discipline? Shouldnt the headline be: "Minority students screw up more" It has nothing to do with racism.
Its depends on your definition of screw up.
Any chance it could be that black students just happen to cause more of the problems or is this just a precursior to what happens in the real world where blacks commit a disproportion of the crimes and so they fill a disproportionate amount of the spaces in prision? Just wondering.
Mik----
They don't, what you've been lead to believe. Do I need to spoon feed you facts now?
The Urban Teacher Residency is NOT a new concept. When I went to college to become a teacher, I was required to participate in a student teacher program for a semester. I was placed in a special program with 2 other teachers and we were mentored with the state's teacher of the year a few years prior. It worked out very well because when I graduated, I became a teacher in the inner city. My first year was a little challenging but starting in the second year, things went well and I received top ratings. The problem for me, however, was the fact that the politics of the school system, the bureaucracy, was so strong and some of the other teachers resented me because I was there to teach so it was more than a job to me. I credit my success to a strong educational foundation from my undergraduate courses, which focused on understanding child development and how to create lesson plans for the subjects I would be teaching based on my students' needs and my masters degree in special education which further prepared me. I cannot, however, disagree that maybe my student teacher training would have been even better if it had been extended to a full year. So I am saying, we do not have to throw out the baby with the bath water. Much was successful in the past but the tendency by many, sometimes for ego, is to criticize everything instead of looking at what has been working and expand on this.
Seriously, \who writes this left-wing, marxist garbage trying to blame racism for the poor attitudes and behavior of blacks and hispanics? Just another attempt by left wingnuts to attack white people and blame all the problems on everything BUT the cause...
As a teacher who spent three years teaching in an inner-city school, let me weigh in on this.
1. Stereotypes to the contrary, school violence among African-American students is comparatively rare and is mostly limited to fist fights among males.
2. Drug use is not that common either.
3. The major problem I had was class control. My experience was that African-American students were, on average, far more disruptive than white students. I had students sing loudly and bang on desks, for example, disrupting the learning environment for everyone. They talked non-stop. On some days, the noise was so awful that my ears literally, physically hurt at the end of the day.
4. When I wrote detentions to try to stop the disruptive behavior, they simply refused to serve them.
5. When I referred the unserved detentions to higher levels, the administrators refused to apply consequences.
6. Let me suggest that what is going on with higher suspension rates is not racism, per se, but cultural differences in the style of discipline. My observation is that African-American parents are quite authoritative while white parents, in general, are less so. When white teachers try to discipline A-A kids, they lack the tone of authoritativeness that the kids respond to. And it is very hard for white teachers to discipline in ways that they did not grow up with and don't use in their private lives. Consequently, African-American kids tend not to take the white teacher seriously and the kids act up, despite her best efforts. Then the teacher gets frustrated and finally, after she can't stand it any more, takes harsh action. This is a cultural gap, not racism in the usual sense.
7. The previous poster who suggested that white kids are just as nasty but in different ways is correct. I have found many white students to be snide, verbally abusive in a passive-aggressive way, and quite hurtful in their treatment of me. And at least one has tried recording me on her cell phone, but fortunately, I didn't take the bait and it was okay. Apart from class control issues, it is actually easier to work with African-American kids than many white kids. By the way, white kids in Christian schools are some of the nastiest, most hurtful kids I have ever worked with.
8. The educational background of many minority students is rather poor, a fact that increases frustration and misbehavior. Try teaching Algebra II to kids who don't know their multiplication tables and can't add fractions while being expected to follow a pace that leaves your kids in the dust and results in failure. It is tough.
In my view, it is time to move beyond accusations of racism and try to find the underlying mechanisms for what is going on. Hurling accusations at teachers, most of whom are genuinely trying to do their best, does nothing to solve the problems.
WOW ...... allot of strong feelings and indepth discussions. Pretty much indicates that most people today believe that what you receive is a result of what you have done yourself. Speaking of not inlcuding Asians, what about the Native Americans ..... where are they in these discussions ? As for the African Americans who cause trouble in school and blame it on the teacher / policies .......... I say .........."stop throwing yourself up against an open door". The opportunities are there, so use them. I am sorry that many of these people have poor role models to follow like rappers and sports personalities who are always on the news for petty crimes. As for good teachers leaving, I would too, if I were in fear of my life. The bad part of the black culture is depicted and glorified on TV, Movies, and music. The words in rap are like potty jokes ........ just for pre teens which actually put down the black race, especially the women. How many times do you see black women in TV commercials opposite a white male. Very few to none. Now how many times do you see a black male opposite a white female, all the time. The media has bought into the fact that black females are not a postive way to push their products or services unless they are white looking. A professor once said in a class I was taking (years ago) the black culture was 20 to 30 years behind and the females were an additonal 10 years behind................ A point of interest ..........I would say that most blacks don't even have a clue where the sagging pants fad came from. It was used by plantation owners in the South to have their slaves in a position of difficulty if they decided to run. With their pants partically down, it was difficult to get away. I attended a "Black Client Workshop in Cincinnati OH and one of their speakers (black) shared that information. ..........Sooooooo, how do you change the social, lower income mentality. It doesn't come from blaming others. As for the black culture it comes from within the Black community itself. Perhaps with all the people needing to group back with their families due to economic reasons, then the family will get stronger and be postive force in these struggling lives, if there is a family to go back to. As for Asians, Native Americans and other, ......... family is a good start. BE one, Not a gang, but a positive example to follow. Peace Out.
I think this article did exactly what it was intended to do....got to love the media for putting this out there.
At some point the King message of education as a way out of poverty was turned on by the black community. Becoming well educated started to mean "selling out" or "being white". The education system became just that - the "white system" just like police became part of the "white system", systems to be scorned and not bought into. It has had tragic impact. Yes, it's easier to blame the system for one's failure instead of working hard and doing what needs to be done. This is what many have chosen to do. The change has to start from within - do you really believe the mostly liberal education world is racist? Of course not, but it's an easy scapegoat. Training our teachers to be more "culturally sensitive"is not the solution.
An incredibly bad study, if you ask me. They only consider blacks and hispanics as minority. The first post astutely pointed out that Asians, including Indians, don't seem to have this problem. Also, the reason schools don't offer calculus, physics, etc., is because the students can't handle these rigorous courses. They are not interested in studying. Also, the part about two schools being successful in enrolling minority students in these courses and courses for gifted students really means nothing if those children don't make it through those courses. Everything is relative. Gifted at one school is only average at others. Anyone can be "enrolled."
The best way to look at racial disparity would be to study the Department of Defense schools. I bet you will find that minority kids at these schools do just fine. Why? Because their minority parents raised them properly.
Minorities need to quit blaming society for their shortcomings. They need to get their act together.
When I read this I don't think racism, even though I fully undertstand that is the intention of the article! I think what is going on at home that encourages this behavior? I have a good friend who works as a psychologist in a correctional school and she said the kids who come through there have a total lack of respect for authority and the majority come from homes where the parents are more messed up than the students are! This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with parenting. Let's stop teaching our children that they are "entitled" and that the world is against them. Let's encourage them to work hard, obey the rules, and try to improve their life by getting an education!
The last 2 paras say it well. There are schools doing a really good job. High Graduation rates with students going on to higher levels far grater than most schools produce. So find out what they are doing and copy it. Stop paying PHD's to invent from scratch a way to "improve education". Just stop it. Copy the successful programs. Just copy them.