Last month, The Gazette ran a story on how the Maryland State Board of Education is changing policies on school suspensions.
In a nutshell, the state hopes that its changes result in fewer suspensions for students of color, especially African American male students, who are generally suspended at much higher rates than other groups of students.
First, this outcome—the goal of suspending fewer black males—should not be news to Montgomery County Public Schools. One can go back through the MCPS archives and find documents from the 1970s stating that suspension rates for black males must be lower (check the original Black Action Steps). In the late 1980s, MCPS hired two national renowned black psychologists—Drs. Lawrence Johnson and A. Wade Boykin—to study why MCPS suspended more black males than, say, white males.
(Click here to read about Dr. Boykin. However, good luck finding a copy of the Johnson and Boykin report, which said racism played a significant role in disparities.)
Second, why would a school district that claims it closed the achievement gap—and MCPS is all over the map making this claim—be apprehensive about closing its suspension gap?
And according to the Gazette story, when the state Board of Education came to Montgomery County last week to talk about its new policies, some in the audience “snickered” at the idea that the suspension gap could be eliminated in three years.
So, how can we close the achievement gap and not be able to close the suspension gap? But more important than that, why would MCPS knock such a goal? Snicker at such a goal? And isn’t such a goal already in MCPS’s annual performance goals anyway? Yes, it is.
Click here and see pages iv and 6. The MCPS goal is the same as the state’s goal—everyone has equal suspension rates.
In life, I have never actually believed that societies achieve equal outcomes. Life just does not work that way. I rarely look for equal outcomes, but rather, I look for outcomes that seem reasonably close or equal. I think they call that fairness. And then it seems reasonable to me that a school district that claims it closed its academic achievement gaps ought to be able to do the same for its school suspension gaps—and along the way, make good on a promise first made more than 40 years ago to the county's black community.
http://mccpta.net/testimonies_dir/2011-2012/MCCPTA_PublicComments_COMAR_13.A.08.pdf
This piece comes to different conclusions--blame the parents rather than the teachers. What are your thoughts, Mr. Hawkins? Is this a problem that schools should fix, or do parents/community leaders/faith leaders/etc. bear the burden?
What? Yes, that's the point. Racists have those assumptions which very much is a contributing factor to the suspension gap (the issue also manifests itself more broadly in our court system). Other contributing factors include the current framework of school being intrinsically anti-male (sitting for long periods, horseplay is frowned upon - which, of course, is a natural state for adolescent boys, etc.) and the fact that, currently, the African-American population of the county is poorer and obviously that has its own set of problems that don't stop at the school door. The point is addressing the issue, psychologically, on both sides (students and teachers/administrators) makes sense so as to help lower the number of unwarranted, reckless, and counterproductive suspensions and expulsions which disproportionally harm black males.
Have you spent an hour in a public high school classroom? I doubt it.