Higher Rates Of Discipline: A Case Study

With no malicious intent, the notion has been proposed that the disproportionate rates of African American male students subjected to exclusionary discipline practices can be attributed to the general belief that children of poor socioeconomic backgrounds, primarily African American children, exhibit elevated levels of violence and disruptive behavior (Skinner, 2013). However, the evidence shows that such disproportionality in discipline is not due entirely to economic disadvantage, nor is there any convincing data supporting the assumption that African American students exhibit higher rates of disruption or violence that would warrant higher rates of discipline. Rather, African American students may be disciplined more severely for less serious or more subjective reasons, indicating the presence of underlying racial bias and racial profiling within the education system as it relates to disciplinary trends (Skiba 2002). Such racial profiling and biases are documented by Skiba, as “both racial and gender differences remained when controlling for socioeconomic status, and although evidence emerged that boys engage more frequently in a broad range of disruptive behavior, there were no similar findings for race (2002). This differential pattern of treatment proves that the rigidity used when enforcing zero tolerance policies affects African American males at higher rates due to the way they are viewed by school staff, as well as evidence of higher office referral rates, and the disproportionate allocation of exclusionary discipline they receive from their …show more content…
Not only do African American males suffer from less time in an academic classroom due to exclusionary discipline as a result of zero tolerance policies, but research also indicates that involvement in exclusionary discipline leads to feelings of alienation from school, elevated dropout rates, and alarming incarceration rates (Darensbourg, Perez and Blake