DALLAS - A new coalition of education, civil-rights and faith-based activists says many Texas schools are behind the curve when it comes to disciplinary policies. Recent studies have shown that a heavy reliance on expulsions and suspensions tends to be counter-productive. Still, most districts leave such decisions to overworked teachers and administrators, according to members of the Coalition for Education Not Incarceration.
The group and its allies are forming a "human chain" in front of Dallas' Wade Juvenile Justice Center today at 11 a.m., demanding that trustees address the so-called school-to-prison-pipeline problem. Allison Brim, organizing director for Dallas County Texas Organizing Project (TOP), says the data is clear, and now it is time for new policies.
"We're ready to do what it takes to physically unite and push forward until the Dallas School Board takes action on this."
Brim says unless teachers get more support, guidance and resources to handle behavioral problems more productively, schools will continue "criminalizing" the normal misbehavior of very young children.
"Students as young as 6 years old are given class-c misdemeanor tickets for disrupting the class, or getting in a schoolyard fight; they're suspended for three days for coming to school with their shirts untucked or wearing flip-flops."
She says some Texas districts have seen success with alternative approaches - such as Positive Behavior Intervention and Support programs in Amarillo and Austin - that have improved the overall learning environment in schools. But she thinks the 157,000 students in Dallas are unnecessarily at risk because the district has chosen to ignore the problems associated with removing kids from classrooms.
"Punishments put kids on a path to where they're more likely to drop out, they're more likely to be held back a grade, and they're more likely to eventually end up in the juvenile justice system."
The new coalition will ask trustees to create a task force charged with developing district-wide policies that push fewer students - especially minorities - toward the legal system. Non-whites and students with educational disabilities are disproportionately more likely to be removed from classrooms at the discretion of teachers.
After an expulsion or suspension, the likelihood that a student will wind up in the juvenile justice system increases almost three-fold, according to a Council of State Governments study, available at http://justicecenter.csg.org/resources/juveniles.
Details of the Dallas action are at www.organizetexas.org.
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It's estimated that nearly half of all schools in the country don't have enough teachers. To help change that, the University of Texas in El Paso offers a residency program to help ensure that first-time teachers succeed.
The "Miner Teacher Residency" gives students in the College of Education an opportunity to work in elementary and middle schools alongside working teachers.
Clifton Tanabe, dean of the UTEP College of Education, was part of a recent national roundtable discussion on ways to solve the teacher shortage, and said the program gives future educators the skills they need to be ready for their first day of class.
"A third grader in a first-year teacher's classroom is only going to get to do third grade once, but that teacher will be able to do the third grade again and again," he explained. "So, we want them ready for that first group of third graders that they take on."
Tanabe added nearly half of the students enrolled in the program are first-generation college students and 70% are bilingual. He adds that mirrors the population of students in the public school system in El Paso, where 90% of the students are Hispanic. Most of the new teachers remain in the area, he said.
Many school districts have been forced to leave positions open, or fill them with teachers who are not fully certified. Some rural Texas districts have gone to a four-day school week. And some teachers are leaving the profession, citing increased workloads, low pay and concerns about safety.
According to Tanabe, teacher retention is directly related to being successful in the first two years on the job - and the UT program addresses this.
"So, folks who graduate from our residency model in their first and second years in teaching are set up with an instructional coach who's from the university, from the College of Education, to work with them on individualized instructional improvement," he continued.
The residency program is in its sixth year. It currently has 62 teachers working in five different school districts in the El Paso area.
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Ohio's Black students are more likely to face excessively harsh discipline practices such as expulsion and suspension, according to a recently released report from the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio.
The data show out-of-school suspensions and expulsions rose in every grade level from kindergarten through twelfth grade in the 2022-23 school year, compared with the previous academic year.
John Standford, state director for the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio, said economically disadvantaged students comprised 83% of all out-of-school suspensions.
"School districts really have to pay closer attention to the data and really screen the data, review the data, on a regular basis to really begin to address the issues of inequities," Standford urged.
Last year saw 174,000 cases of total suspension or expulsion among low-income students compared to 35,000 cases among students who do not qualify as economically disadvantaged. According to the report, Black females in Ohio were six times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than their white female peers. Black males were also more than four times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white male peers.
Kim Eckhart, research manager for the fund, said she understands the difficulties teachers face. She hopes the report encourages districts across the state to support schools with the resources and time needed to address behavioral problems restoratively.
"We need schools to be supporting teachers with additional time and space," Eckhart contended. "So that there is capacity to address these things, rather than just kicking the student out of the class, kicking them out of the school."
School discipline practices are also linked to Ohio's alarmingly high chronic absenteeism rates. According to the report, missing as little as two days of school per month can lead to chronic absence. More than 26% of Ohio students -- more than 400,000 children -- were chronically absent from school in the 2022-2023 school year, up by nearly half from the 2018-19 school year.
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Idaho lawmakers are considering a measure that would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses.
Critics say it could keep potential students from attending school in the state. Senate Bill 1357 would prohibit the use of state funds for DEI, and DEI offices from operating at colleges and universities.
Nick Koenig is a PhD student in geography at the University of Idaho.
"These positions that are trying to be taken away from this bill are specifically to foster student success on campus," said Koenig, "not just for students from marginalized groups but also just the totality of the campus community."
Lawmakers supporting the bill say eliminating DEI programs would save the state more than $3 million.
But Koenig said the consequences of eliminating these positions will have ripple effects. He said he spoke with the LGBTQ office at the University of Idaho before deciding to attend.
"The person I originally chatted with before coming to this university," said Koenig, "if her position was just not there, I would not have come to this university at all."
Koenig said the legislation would also make it hard to recruit people to colleges and universities in Idaho.
"People go to school say that they can see themselves as COOs or as teachers or as sociologists or as geographers, like in my case," said Koenig, "and if I saw that they're actively trying to remove me as a queer person from the state then, yeah, why would I want to spend four years in a state that wants to remove me as a person?"
Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.
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