Education Week - March 22, 2017 - 32

COMMENTARY

Why Are We Criminalizing
Black Students?

Jared Boggess for Education Week

By Tyrone C. Howard
recent special report
in Education Week revealed serious concerns
about the prevalence of
school resource officers
at elementary and secondary schools across
the nation ("Policing
America's Schools: An Education Week
Analysis," Jan. 25, 2017). On the surface,
the presence of law-enforcement personnel
would seem to be a good step in helping to
create and sustain safe learning environments for students and school personnel.
However, a deeper look at the presence of
SROs on school campuses raises serious concerns that reflect a pattern of racial inequities about who is policed, who is profiled,
and who is punished.
Consider the fact that black students are
most likely to be punished despite often being
one of the smallest populations in many school
districts across the country. Data shown in Education Week reveal that black males are three
times more likely to be arrested at schools
than their white male peers. Black girls do
not fare much better: They are arrested 1.5
times more than their white male peers. It
is not the sheer number of arrests that is so
disturbing, but the disproportionality: Of the
schools that referred students to law enforcement, 17 percent of their enrollments were
black, yet 26 percent of all students referred
to law enforcement were black. Across a majority of states, no other group has such a high
arrest-to-enrollment ratio.
The first reaction for some when seeing disproportionality data is to conclude that SROs
are on campuses where violent acts are most
likely to occur. The presence of school resource

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FAKE NEWS
ISN'T NEW

officers is most prevalent at schools with black
students, as well as low-income and racially
segregated schools, where children of color
are most likely to attend. This should trouble
educators. In truth, incidents of violence are
not higher where black students attend school,
and this raises serious concerns about how
schools may be contributing to damaging racial profiles of particular students.
The irony of school discipline is that the
increased presence of SROs is a direct result
of the "zero tolerance" disciplinary policies
of the early 2000s. Such policies emerged

What message does this
tendency send to other
students about black
students?"
largely as a result of mass shootings on
school campuses. However, over the past two
decades, a majority of mass school shootings
have been in largely white, middle-class,
rural, or suburban communities. They were
also overwhelmingly perpetrated by white
males. Consider Littleton, Colo.; Paducah,
Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.; and Newtown, Conn.
The presence of resource officers seems
to create a campus environment in which a
school looks more like a police headquarters
than a community of learning. And those officers are given the responsibility of interacting with students, typically without having
any training on youth development, theories
of learning, student disabilities, and overall
child behavior.

32 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 22, 2017 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

THE BRAIN-HEALTH
EFFECT

To underscore the severity of the problem of
SRO presence on campuses, consider that the
U.S. Department of Education estimates that
there are close to 31,000 resource officers or
other law-enforcement officers stationed in
the nation's nearly 100,000 public schools.
The Education Department states that another 13,000 sworn law-enforcement officers
are spending at least part of their time at
schools. On some campuses, the number of
officers is greater than that of school psychologists, nurses, psychiatric social workers, and
learning specialists combined. It prompts the
question: What is the priority? Is it to police
children or to support them?
Instead of punishing students, schools
might be better served allocating limited
resources to provide additional supports for
mental-health services and programs instead
of SROs. Much of what is seen from students
who engage in conflict is a need for intervention for depression, anxiety, bipolar issues, or
untreated trauma. More schools are adopting
restorative-justice practices, which in some
cases are showing positive outcomes. More
resources should be devoted to such programs that seek to help and heal students as
opposed to criminalizing them.
Finally, a sustained focus on mental-health
supports and a focus on mindfulness would
take significant steps toward ameliorating
the chronic gaps in school outcomes that
have plagued low-income students and children of color. Moreover, there is a need for
schools to have an explicit focus on creating
a school culture which neither criminalizes
students nor creates an unfair racial climate.
Other steps that could make a difference in
changing these outcomes, for example:
* Eliminate the criminalization of low-level
behaviors that pose no public-safety threat
to students, teachers, or staff, such as "willful

Q&A WITH GARY YOUNGE:
SEVEN BULLETS A DAY

defiance," dress-code violations, and talking
back to teachers. Also, reduce the ability of
school personnel to refer student-behavior
cases to juvenile court for minor offenses.
* Eradicate zero-tolerance policies and develop more culturally sustaining and appropriate pedagogies centered on student communication and learning.
* Create more trauma-sensitive schools
and classrooms, which identify the roots of
student behavior and provide the appropriate
resources for them and families.
* Ensure that suspensions, expulsions, and
arrests can be used only when immediate
safety threats exist and no other interventions are available.
* Provide more sustained training for
school personnel and SROs on unconscious
bias and racial microaggressions. In some
cases, white children and children of color
engage in similar types of behavior in schools,
yet the responses and punishments can differ notably. Unconscious attitudes and beliefs
may explain much of the racial disproportionality of school arrests.
Why do schools criminalize black students?
What message does this tendency send to
other students about black students? And,
more importantly, what is the message that
black children take away from continually
being depicted as problem children? To upend
the inequities, students, school leaders, and
classroom teachers must discuss the data
around discipline, talk openly about race, and
recognize how they could be contributing to a
hostile learning environment for black children. It is time for schools to be accountable
to the students they serve. n
TYRONE C. HOWARD is a professor of education
in the Graduate School of Education & Information
Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Education Week - March 22, 2017

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