Dive Brief:
- The United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent has released a preliminary report looking at how children of color are treated in U.S. schools, including an examination of structural discrimination that creates significant barriers to equity.
- Specific topics contained within the report include police brutality, school curriculum and mass incarceration, as well as the reasons why black Americans have less income, education, and food security than other demographics.
- One notable inclusion in the report is a breakdown of the school-to-prison pipeline and how inequitable school discipline practices unfairly produce long-term negative effects on black students.
Dive Insight:
To improve, schools can adopt a number of strategies, starting with taking a look at racial breakdowns in the classroom.
The problem of resegregation demands the attention of districts across the U.S. A year after the report "Brown at 60," which examined the aftereffects of Brown v. Board of Education, another study found that U.S. schools are moving backwards.
In Minnesota, civil rights attorney Daniel Shulman says that segregation has perhaps gotten "even worse" since 1995, when he won a suit charging that the state was in violation of its constitution for "allowing groups of students to inhabit separate and inherently unequal schools." Shulman has since filed yet another lawsuit, seeking "class action status for children in Minneapolis public schools and St. Paul public schools," on behalf of their majority-students-of-color population, naming the state, its governor, and its education commissioner as defendants.
To dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, districts may want to look to California. Right now, the Golden State is considered a leader, according to UCLA's Civil Rights Project, which has produced research showing that academic success tracks with a reduction in suspensions for students. In California, black students have seen the biggest drop in suspensions as compared to other races, while simultaneously enjoying the most reported academic progress, according to results from the California Academic Performance Index.
“Overall, the number of suspensions dropped from 709,580 in the 2011-2012 school year to 503,101 in 2013-2014,” The Huffington Post reported. For black students, the number fell from 33 suspensions for every 100 students to 25.6.
Ilinois has also passed a bill curtailing suspensions and expulsions in the state, requiring districts to rewrite discipline policies in order to limit harsh measures.