This is the first in a three-part series on the use of exclusionary discipline in public schools. A regular Source feature, Undercurrents explores issues, ideas and events as they develop beneath the surface in the Virgin Islands community.
Locked out of school, where does a student go?
All too often, into the waiting arms of the criminal justice system.
The so-called “school to prison pipeline” has received a lot of national attention in recent years, with critics citing statistics that show many schools suspend or even expel students for relatively minor infractions, setting them up for academic failure, alienating them from the community and placing them on the path to poverty and crime.
The good news in the Virgin Islands is that the use of exclusionary discipline in public schools appears to be decreasing significantly. The bad news is that it is still relatively high.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently cited school suspension rates ranging from 2.2 percent in North Dakota to 12.7 percent in South Carolina. As calculated from V.I. Education Department figures, the Virgin Islands rate in the 2011-12 school year – the most recent for which figures were available – was just under 6 percent.
Earlier this year, Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder issued a Discipline Guidance Package aimed at helping teachers and school administrators to avoid pushing students out of the classroom, while still maintaining order. The project is a joint effort by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education.
“During critical years that are proven to impact a student’s later chances for success, alarming numbers of young people are suspended, expelled or even arrested for relatively minor transgressions like school uniform violations, schoolyard fights or showing ‘disrespect’ by laughing in class,” Holder said in formal remarks at the rollout of the guidance package.
“Nationwide, as many as 95 percent of out-of-school suspensions are for nonviolent misbehavior – like being disruptive, acting disrespectfully, tardiness, profanity and dress code violations,” Duncan said in his remarks. “Schools should remove students from the classroom as a last resort and only for appropriately serious infractions, like endangering the safety of other students, teachers or themselves.”
Both officials recognized the need for discipline but, as Holder put it, “a routine school discipline infraction should land a student in a principal’s office – not in a police precinct.”
The national movement is especially concerned with potential civil rights violations involving students, particularly those of color and those with special needs.
According to Duncan, Civil Rights Data Collection at the U.S. Department of Education shows African-American students are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be expelled or suspended.
Given that blacks far outnumber whites in V.I. public schools, racial discrimination may not be the same issue in the territory as elsewhere in the country. But there is concern about special needs students. Local education officials admit that, in the past, the numbers of special education students receiving exclusionary discipline has been disproportionately high, and they say that there has been a concerted effort to correct that disparity, with some success.
The V.I. Board of Education sets the perimeters for suspensions and expulsions, and has added special protections for special needs students, making it more difficult to remove them from the classroom setting.
(Next: a closer look at Virgin Islands numbers, with guidance from territory officials.)
