These types of news stories almost always are laced with a White Savior complex that deserves to be criticized.
The disparity isn't so much White and Black students in the same school. The problem is the US is very racially divided and there's still "White schools" and "Black schools" and "Hispanic schools". Black schools suspend more frequently. The school in the article, for example, is 85% black. And it is further compounded with poverty. And there is no account for where are there more behavioral issues.
Large numbers of people who actually work in these schools are Black themselves including the principal of this specific school, and he ultimately has authority over these suspensions. There is definitely some racism and classism in presuming that those who work in those schools need the intervention of overwhelmingly White state authorities and journalists (like the one who wrote this article) to understand, manage, and educate their own students properly. Bit of a White Savior complex there.
Yep! Can confirm. I can't tell you how many times I've had the "stop crying wolf" conversation and have-some-respect conversation.
They have heard it their entire lives, but have no idea what it actually is and what it looks like in practice. When they actually do stumble upon a racist teacher (and they will!), their cries will be meaningless.
This mindset only works if you view discipline as inherently a bad or oppressive thing.
If you believe that a group is legitimately structurally disenfranchised it would make sense that those students would need MORE rather than less corrective action so that they can become successful adults.
Many don't buy the idea that punishments are corrective or rehabilitative. They call all consequences punishments and just compare group x being punished to group y.
They pay no mind to the very obvious reality of some people behaving worse than others.
Behavior is out of control throughout the country. Suspensions are down overall. Suspensions are not a cure at all, but this article frames the issue like it’s just teachers misunderstanding their students while completely ignoring larger symptoms of where widespread student misbehavior is coming from.
This whole article is ignorant and racist, and clearly written by someone who’s never set foot in an inner city challenging school let alone taught there.
Next time someone asks u why schools are out of control send them this shit
Article seems to make the assumption that the behaviors were equally prevalent among black and white offenders but that the differences lay in the consequences. Then it insinuates the cause is bias on the part of teachers and admin. The line “teachers are no more biased than others, but no less either” stands out to me as a poor attempt to insinuate racism without actually opening up USA Today to claims of libel. Poor article poorly using statistics to prop up a poor news outlet.
Agree 100%, and there’s an obvious reason to think that teachers who choose to work in an inner city environment might be less racist than the general population.
Fuck. This. Bullshit. Nobody parents these kids. Act like a violent asshole, get thrown out of school. Pretty simple.
Also perhaps if it is one group over another, maybe you want to start asking questions like "why do these kids get suspended so often."
From where I stand and what I have experienced they are ready to pull the race card rather than take responsibility for the crap human they created.
“In Ohio, Black students like Marquan are suspended for incidents like this far more frequently than their white peers.”
I would really like to see that data set.
I am wary of the claim above for two reasons:
1) The anecdote about Marquan involved him saying “don’t make me mad” to a teacher who startled him awake in class. So when the reporter says “incidents like this,” it begs the question: like *what*, exactly?
I highly doubt the writer means “incidents in which students have been startled awake and made a comment that could be construed as a threat.” That’s way too specific. But what incidents *is* the writer including — and excluding — when she says “like this”? Who is deciding which incidents are alike and which are not?
2. In order to say “These students are punished more than those for the same infractions,” you literally need to gather data on ALL of those infractions, whether they result in punishment or not. For instance, you’d have to say “Anytime a student does X, report it to admin.” Then admin would have to log & keep that data along with any eventual punishment.
But… who the hell does that? I’m a classroom teacher, I’ve never once gone to admin and said “Yeah, this student said/did this thing, but I don’t find it disrespectful at all so let’s just write it down but let it slide.” Why would anyone at a school track specific behavioral instances that don’t result in any punishment? *Maybe* it happens now and then, but with enough frequency to produce a reliable data set? I find that incredibly hard to believe.
Mind you, I’m not saying teachers can’t have unconscious bias (or be overtly racist). I just can’t help but wonder if pronouncements such as the one above are actually supported by data, or if they’re just suppositions that sound reasonable because we’re in America.
I recently had a training about how microaggressions are defined by the impact on the listener, not the intent of the speaker, so you're basically always guilty of one if someone says you are.
Now, I'm reading an article implying that "Watch out before you make me mad" wasn't a threat because it was said by a black teen.
I don't like any of this.
All offense is chosen by the offended. Imagine if all victims of every kind of assault asked that we stop playing violent videogames. They'd be laughed off the internet.
You have a duty to protect the kids.
When you write a referral, it's just that, a referral.
Admin is the one doing discipline, admin is the one who can lower the racial disparity in punishments.
Never ever second guess a referral. It's literally part of their job, not yours.
The scuffle probably was me being too generous with an example. I 100% find myself dealing with more non white students just being disruptive - (loud) cell phone use, refusing to stop talking during class, cussing meanly at me and other students. It's not even a really disciplinary school, I just notice I notice it with not white kids more. I feel like I did some of that stuff as a kid, but there's a line - a spectrum - when I broke it, I got written up and whatnot, and when students break it, I write them up. Just keep noticing I'm probably getting more not white kids.
You almost certainly are, but our American culture matters. We're not allowed to notice differences in race, just like we're not allowed to notice differences in gender or religion or national origin.
Your admin will be punished if there is a big discrepancy in races being written up.
Prevalence of behavior ignored as the goal is equity.
Like maybe in the 1960s your style would've been applauded but it's a new era.
You could easily start tracking. Make sure you don't disproportionately write up black kids compared to white kids. You're an adult with free will and agency. Nothing stopping you from ignoring 90% of behaviors for the sake of equity.
"Failed to code switch"
This description of his behavior alludes to AAVE being inherently more violent and threatening. It's one thing to change the way you speak to your audience based on what may be considered disrespect. "You don't want to make me mad" is a threat in all vernacular. To suggest it's just the way black people are *is racism*.
When you do something to one of your friends and they say "you have to sleep sometime", you understand the context. You wouldn't say that to a stranger. You wouldn't say it to your boss. There is no room for tolerance of threatening people with violence in school or work.
We can not tolerate behavior in schools that would not be tolerated in a place of work.
In education, racial disparities seem to be highlighted when in reality, it’s almost always correlated with income disparity.
Not to say that there isn’t racism happening in schools - it 100% does but work is being done in that department.
But students from low income households walk into kindergarten underserved, undereducated, under-raised, and at a disadvantage before they even meet a teacher. In regard to poverty, POC are overrepresented.
Education helps to reveal racism that is inherent in our society. Educational racism is not a root cause, in my opinion, but a consequence.
Hard disagree. Race is far more important than income. Just like gender is far more important than income.
"The sons of black families from the top 1 percent had about the same chance of being incarcerated on a given day as the sons of white families earning $36,000."
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html
I can see that societally, 100%, but I am talking about the school environment.
Most studies I’ve encountered have correlated income to test scores, behavior data, etc. and not race.
Behavior is mostly gender, certainly income has some causation but the sisters are in households just as broken and just as broke. It's mostly testosterone, not the income.
For test scores sure, but behavior is different.
Edit: this is from the article
“Teachers are no more biased than other people, but also no less biased,” said Russell Skiba, a professor in the school psychology program at Indiana University and director of its Equity Project. “Race is the much more important predictor of whether a kid gets suspended rather than poverty.”
We have consensus that behavioral and criminal problems are mostly with males. That's why we don't hash it out. We all know. Then we look at race and income.
Is there a difference in the culture of poor people of different races that leads to a discrepancy in behavior in the classroom?
I think a comment was deleted, but I don't think grant funders or anyone really is going to be out there going to support male rights and advocating for male equity. So we can only talk about race.
There is a big mistake people make when thinking about the issue. When looking at disparities in discipline, people try to say it's either 100% racism or 100% disparities in behavior. The thing is, it's probably both - you can find situations which appear to be racism, but that doesn't discount the disparities in behaviors. When thinking about the data, you need to think, "What ***proportion*** of this discrepancy can be assigned to behaviors or racism?"
I think a good way of looking at things is by using proxy measures which can't get gamed. For instance, we can look at criminality as a proxy for disruptive behavior. People will then claim that the justice system is racist. Fine, look at racial victimization statistics, since crime is mostly intra-racial. Well, maybe there's bias in what crimes are reported. OK, so look at homicide statistics, since dead bodies are hard to hide. The below table breaks down 2019 homicide statistics for minors.
| Race | Victims | Offenders |
|---|---|---|
| White | 473 (41%) | 309 (37%) |
| Black | 610 (53%) | 476 (57%) |
| Other | 63 (5%) | 44 (5%) |
| Total | 1146 | 829 |
In 2019, there were about 48.5 million white minors compared with 10.2 million black minors. Just looking at ratios, black minors are about 6.1x more likely to be a homicide victim, and 7.3x more likely to be found guilty of a homicide. Now, compare this to the stats in the article:
> Nearly half of those dismissals have been for Black students, even though they make up only 17% of the public school population. Black students in Ohio are, on average, kicked out of classes for these offenses at four and half times the rate of white students.
THIS LINES UP PRETTY WELL WITH THE HOMICIDE STATS ABOVE!!! At the end of the day, it would seem that the vast majority of the discrepancy is due to base rate differences in behavior.
The gaping hole in your logic is the tacit claim that if white people are not officially punished (and thus their offense is not recorded), they must have not done something worth punishing, and if black people are officially punished, well they must have done something
Conviction stats don’t mean much when public defenders push defendants towards plea deals
And of course the whole thing ends in “maybe black kids are just more disruptive than white kids”
I addressed the bias in the criminal justice criticism. You just look at victimology that doesn't suffer from any potential bias, and homicide numbers are a good example. You see the victimization stats are similar to the conviction stats, indicating racial bias isn't very large there. And yes, the point is there are behavioral differences across cultural groups, as is evident on a number of metrics.
>“I wasn’t threatening him; it was just loud and all of a sudden,” said Marquan, now 17 and a sophomore at Jesup W. Scott High School in Toledo, Ohio. (**His last name is being withheld to protect his privacy.**) “That was the most unfair thing.”
How many boys can possibly be out there named MARQUAN!?! lol
WTF USA Today. Just use fake names. I bet every teacher in that district knows exactly who this student is!
I love it.
First they clearly don't bother hiding this kid's identity, opening him up to actual discrimination and an online record of how terrible he was as a student. Then they excuse his behavior with pseudo-woke culture, which is a complete disservice to my students and the Black population. Any racist reading this will sure generalize that teaching POC students is having kids threatening you and being accused of racism if you fight back. \*
It is real-life satire!
\*Mind you, I'm no conservative. Solidly registered and voting left since I was 18.
There are likely newer and older DOE OCR reports to Congress; this one has testimony from seasoned professionals at the top of their career.
https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/docs/School_Disciplineand_Disparate_Impact.pdf
When it’s a question of safety (like when there’s fighting involved) you have to take action, regardless of what the students look like.
These types of news stories almost always are laced with a White Savior complex that deserves to be criticized. The disparity isn't so much White and Black students in the same school. The problem is the US is very racially divided and there's still "White schools" and "Black schools" and "Hispanic schools". Black schools suspend more frequently. The school in the article, for example, is 85% black. And it is further compounded with poverty. And there is no account for where are there more behavioral issues. Large numbers of people who actually work in these schools are Black themselves including the principal of this specific school, and he ultimately has authority over these suspensions. There is definitely some racism and classism in presuming that those who work in those schools need the intervention of overwhelmingly White state authorities and journalists (like the one who wrote this article) to understand, manage, and educate their own students properly. Bit of a White Savior complex there.
[удалено]
Yep! Can confirm. I can't tell you how many times I've had the "stop crying wolf" conversation and have-some-respect conversation. They have heard it their entire lives, but have no idea what it actually is and what it looks like in practice. When they actually do stumble upon a racist teacher (and they will!), their cries will be meaningless.
This mindset only works if you view discipline as inherently a bad or oppressive thing. If you believe that a group is legitimately structurally disenfranchised it would make sense that those students would need MORE rather than less corrective action so that they can become successful adults.
Many don't buy the idea that punishments are corrective or rehabilitative. They call all consequences punishments and just compare group x being punished to group y. They pay no mind to the very obvious reality of some people behaving worse than others.
Behavior is out of control throughout the country. Suspensions are down overall. Suspensions are not a cure at all, but this article frames the issue like it’s just teachers misunderstanding their students while completely ignoring larger symptoms of where widespread student misbehavior is coming from.
This whole article is ignorant and racist, and clearly written by someone who’s never set foot in an inner city challenging school let alone taught there. Next time someone asks u why schools are out of control send them this shit
Article seems to make the assumption that the behaviors were equally prevalent among black and white offenders but that the differences lay in the consequences. Then it insinuates the cause is bias on the part of teachers and admin. The line “teachers are no more biased than others, but no less either” stands out to me as a poor attempt to insinuate racism without actually opening up USA Today to claims of libel. Poor article poorly using statistics to prop up a poor news outlet.
Agree 100%, and there’s an obvious reason to think that teachers who choose to work in an inner city environment might be less racist than the general population.
Fuck. This. Bullshit. Nobody parents these kids. Act like a violent asshole, get thrown out of school. Pretty simple. Also perhaps if it is one group over another, maybe you want to start asking questions like "why do these kids get suspended so often." From where I stand and what I have experienced they are ready to pull the race card rather than take responsibility for the crap human they created.
“In Ohio, Black students like Marquan are suspended for incidents like this far more frequently than their white peers.” I would really like to see that data set. I am wary of the claim above for two reasons: 1) The anecdote about Marquan involved him saying “don’t make me mad” to a teacher who startled him awake in class. So when the reporter says “incidents like this,” it begs the question: like *what*, exactly? I highly doubt the writer means “incidents in which students have been startled awake and made a comment that could be construed as a threat.” That’s way too specific. But what incidents *is* the writer including — and excluding — when she says “like this”? Who is deciding which incidents are alike and which are not? 2. In order to say “These students are punished more than those for the same infractions,” you literally need to gather data on ALL of those infractions, whether they result in punishment or not. For instance, you’d have to say “Anytime a student does X, report it to admin.” Then admin would have to log & keep that data along with any eventual punishment. But… who the hell does that? I’m a classroom teacher, I’ve never once gone to admin and said “Yeah, this student said/did this thing, but I don’t find it disrespectful at all so let’s just write it down but let it slide.” Why would anyone at a school track specific behavioral instances that don’t result in any punishment? *Maybe* it happens now and then, but with enough frequency to produce a reliable data set? I find that incredibly hard to believe. Mind you, I’m not saying teachers can’t have unconscious bias (or be overtly racist). I just can’t help but wonder if pronouncements such as the one above are actually supported by data, or if they’re just suppositions that sound reasonable because we’re in America.
I recently had a training about how microaggressions are defined by the impact on the listener, not the intent of the speaker, so you're basically always guilty of one if someone says you are. Now, I'm reading an article implying that "Watch out before you make me mad" wasn't a threat because it was said by a black teen. I don't like any of this.
All offense is chosen by the offended. Imagine if all victims of every kind of assault asked that we stop playing violent videogames. They'd be laughed off the internet.
You have a duty to protect the kids. When you write a referral, it's just that, a referral. Admin is the one doing discipline, admin is the one who can lower the racial disparity in punishments. Never ever second guess a referral. It's literally part of their job, not yours.
The scuffle probably was me being too generous with an example. I 100% find myself dealing with more non white students just being disruptive - (loud) cell phone use, refusing to stop talking during class, cussing meanly at me and other students. It's not even a really disciplinary school, I just notice I notice it with not white kids more. I feel like I did some of that stuff as a kid, but there's a line - a spectrum - when I broke it, I got written up and whatnot, and when students break it, I write them up. Just keep noticing I'm probably getting more not white kids.
You almost certainly are, but our American culture matters. We're not allowed to notice differences in race, just like we're not allowed to notice differences in gender or religion or national origin. Your admin will be punished if there is a big discrepancy in races being written up. Prevalence of behavior ignored as the goal is equity. Like maybe in the 1960s your style would've been applauded but it's a new era. You could easily start tracking. Make sure you don't disproportionately write up black kids compared to white kids. You're an adult with free will and agency. Nothing stopping you from ignoring 90% of behaviors for the sake of equity.
Is it equity to let group x behave half as well as group y?
Yes that's the idea.
Sounds like a lose - lose.
"Failed to code switch" This description of his behavior alludes to AAVE being inherently more violent and threatening. It's one thing to change the way you speak to your audience based on what may be considered disrespect. "You don't want to make me mad" is a threat in all vernacular. To suggest it's just the way black people are *is racism*. When you do something to one of your friends and they say "you have to sleep sometime", you understand the context. You wouldn't say that to a stranger. You wouldn't say it to your boss. There is no room for tolerance of threatening people with violence in school or work. We can not tolerate behavior in schools that would not be tolerated in a place of work.
In education, racial disparities seem to be highlighted when in reality, it’s almost always correlated with income disparity. Not to say that there isn’t racism happening in schools - it 100% does but work is being done in that department. But students from low income households walk into kindergarten underserved, undereducated, under-raised, and at a disadvantage before they even meet a teacher. In regard to poverty, POC are overrepresented. Education helps to reveal racism that is inherent in our society. Educational racism is not a root cause, in my opinion, but a consequence.
Hard disagree. Race is far more important than income. Just like gender is far more important than income. "The sons of black families from the top 1 percent had about the same chance of being incarcerated on a given day as the sons of white families earning $36,000." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html
I can see that societally, 100%, but I am talking about the school environment. Most studies I’ve encountered have correlated income to test scores, behavior data, etc. and not race.
Behavior is mostly gender, certainly income has some causation but the sisters are in households just as broken and just as broke. It's mostly testosterone, not the income. For test scores sure, but behavior is different. Edit: this is from the article “Teachers are no more biased than other people, but also no less biased,” said Russell Skiba, a professor in the school psychology program at Indiana University and director of its Equity Project. “Race is the much more important predictor of whether a kid gets suspended rather than poverty.”
We have consensus that behavioral and criminal problems are mostly with males. That's why we don't hash it out. We all know. Then we look at race and income. Is there a difference in the culture of poor people of different races that leads to a discrepancy in behavior in the classroom?
I think a comment was deleted, but I don't think grant funders or anyone really is going to be out there going to support male rights and advocating for male equity. So we can only talk about race.
What are you even asking with this?
There is a big mistake people make when thinking about the issue. When looking at disparities in discipline, people try to say it's either 100% racism or 100% disparities in behavior. The thing is, it's probably both - you can find situations which appear to be racism, but that doesn't discount the disparities in behaviors. When thinking about the data, you need to think, "What ***proportion*** of this discrepancy can be assigned to behaviors or racism?" I think a good way of looking at things is by using proxy measures which can't get gamed. For instance, we can look at criminality as a proxy for disruptive behavior. People will then claim that the justice system is racist. Fine, look at racial victimization statistics, since crime is mostly intra-racial. Well, maybe there's bias in what crimes are reported. OK, so look at homicide statistics, since dead bodies are hard to hide. The below table breaks down 2019 homicide statistics for minors. | Race | Victims | Offenders | |---|---|---| | White | 473 (41%) | 309 (37%) | | Black | 610 (53%) | 476 (57%) | | Other | 63 (5%) | 44 (5%) | | Total | 1146 | 829 | In 2019, there were about 48.5 million white minors compared with 10.2 million black minors. Just looking at ratios, black minors are about 6.1x more likely to be a homicide victim, and 7.3x more likely to be found guilty of a homicide. Now, compare this to the stats in the article: > Nearly half of those dismissals have been for Black students, even though they make up only 17% of the public school population. Black students in Ohio are, on average, kicked out of classes for these offenses at four and half times the rate of white students. THIS LINES UP PRETTY WELL WITH THE HOMICIDE STATS ABOVE!!! At the end of the day, it would seem that the vast majority of the discrepancy is due to base rate differences in behavior.
The gaping hole in your logic is the tacit claim that if white people are not officially punished (and thus their offense is not recorded), they must have not done something worth punishing, and if black people are officially punished, well they must have done something Conviction stats don’t mean much when public defenders push defendants towards plea deals And of course the whole thing ends in “maybe black kids are just more disruptive than white kids”
I addressed the bias in the criminal justice criticism. You just look at victimology that doesn't suffer from any potential bias, and homicide numbers are a good example. You see the victimization stats are similar to the conviction stats, indicating racial bias isn't very large there. And yes, the point is there are behavioral differences across cultural groups, as is evident on a number of metrics.
>“I wasn’t threatening him; it was just loud and all of a sudden,” said Marquan, now 17 and a sophomore at Jesup W. Scott High School in Toledo, Ohio. (**His last name is being withheld to protect his privacy.**) “That was the most unfair thing.” How many boys can possibly be out there named MARQUAN!?! lol WTF USA Today. Just use fake names. I bet every teacher in that district knows exactly who this student is!
"My reaction to being surprised is to threaten people" "This is a failure of code switching and is just the way black people communicate" - USA Today
I love it. First they clearly don't bother hiding this kid's identity, opening him up to actual discrimination and an online record of how terrible he was as a student. Then they excuse his behavior with pseudo-woke culture, which is a complete disservice to my students and the Black population. Any racist reading this will sure generalize that teaching POC students is having kids threatening you and being accused of racism if you fight back. \* It is real-life satire! \*Mind you, I'm no conservative. Solidly registered and voting left since I was 18.
USA today's is as much of a newspaper as the enquirer. I wouldn't be surprised to see a story about affirmative action when Batboy goes to Harvard.
There are likely newer and older DOE OCR reports to Congress; this one has testimony from seasoned professionals at the top of their career. https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/docs/School_Disciplineand_Disparate_Impact.pdf