By Jeff Simpson
In 2011, President Obama's Administration wrote what is known as
a "Dear Colleague" letter. This letter was by no means a guideline but was a well thought out and researched memo to help America's public schools address the opportunity gap and work on ending systemic racism.
The U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice (Departments) are issuing this guidance to assist public elementary and secondary schools in meeting their obligations under Federal law to administer student discipline without discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. The Departments recognize the commitment and effort of educators across the United States to provide their students with an excellent education. The Departments believe that guidance on how to identify, avoid, and remedy discriminatory discipline will assist schools in providing all students with equal educational opportunities.1
The Departments strongly support schools in their efforts to create and maintain safe and orderly educational environments that allow our nation’s students to learn and thrive. Many schools have adopted comprehensive, appropriate, and effective programs demonstrated to: (1) reduce disruption and misconduct; (2) support and reinforce positive behavior and character development; and (3) help students succeed. Successful programs may incorporate a wide range of strategies to reduce misbehavior and maintain a safe learning environment, including conflict resolution, restorative practices, counseling, and structured systems of positive interventions. The Departments recognize that schools may use disciplinary measures as part of a program to promote safe and orderly educational environments.
This was a letter that was jointly drafted by the US Department of Education and the US Department of Justice. It was a well documented, and well thought out response for a very real problem in America....a huge racial disparity and opportunity gap in our schools.
There is a problem with the letter though, it came from President Obama(we are in an era where the number one priority of the Donald and the hard core far right, is erasing anything that President Obama might have done to create a legacy). Secondly, this guideline, is meant to help address racial disparities, another taboo issue for what passes as conservatives these days. In their mind, there is no problem and people of color get in more trouble and have lower grades because they get the grades and punishment they deserve.
See it is important to trust the teachers and the schools when punishing kids of colors, but if they have any other complaints or questions about their working conditions - they need to "shut up and teach" and " stop indoctrinating " our children.
Now that we have established what our friends on the right are so upset about, and the pure hypocrisy of it, lets dig a little deeper into their complaints.
Recently, a group of people on the far right drafted a letter and sent it to Secretary of Education Betsy "Amway" DeVos.
The main signator on this letter, was Rick Esenberg, the face of the Bradley Foundation's Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty(WILL).
There were others who signed, but it really is just a formality. The group think of worker drones for the monied interests of the far right, is as indistinguishable as a harem of seals on the shore.
Let's take a quick peek at the letter:
The baseless demands of the Dear Colleague letter are having real world consequences throughout the nation. Milwaukee is a case in point. The Resolution Agreement requires MPS to “assess whether [it] is implementing its student discipline policies, practices and procedures in a non-discriminatory manner” by collecting “data regarding referrals for student discipline and the imposition of disciplinary sanctions at all District schools” and evaluating, among other things, “whether black students are receiving more removals, referrals or discipline than students of other races,” “whether black students are receiving more expulsions than students of other races,” “whether certain teachers and administrators refer disproportionately high numbers of students of a particular race for discipline,” and “whether black students are disproportionately referred for offenses in which subjective judgment is exercised.” MPS must provide these evaluations to OCR along with “a description of actions it proposes to take in response to these evaluations.”21
If the data “suggests . . . disproportion,” in other words, MPS must “explore
possible causes for the disproportion and consider steps that can be taken to eliminate the
disproportion to the maximum extent possible.”22
Esenberg, is arguing here that it puts a burden on the school systems to try and figure out why, and eliminate the disproportionality in discipline for the students of color.
Esenberg and friends understand why the kids of color have more discipline problems and lower GPA's, etc... They are not white. They are telling Ms. DeVos, that the problem is solved, there is no fixing it and it is time to focus on the white kids.
Of course the red polo/khaki crowd eats this stuff up. To perpetuate the myth that our public schools are failing, that the inner city (larger population of minorities) are out of control and they are interfering with the white kids who want to learn.
It does not take a field full of tiki torches to see it!
Just check out some of the bit players in the right wing echo chamber:
Dave Blaska for instance:
The greater irony is that it was President Barack Obama’s administration that forced districts to set what amounts to racial quotas in school discipline. Thankfully, a Wisconsin-based conservative action group is moving to restore order in the classroom so that children of all colors can succeed.
The National Review weighed in:
As a policy matter, there is overwhelming evidence that Obama-era policies culminating in this “Dear Colleague” letter pushed schools to avoid disciplining students who needed to be disciplined. It made avoiding politically incorrect numbers more important than maintaining school safety.
Actually that is ridiculous, there is zero evidence that the "guidelines" (not regulations), pushed anyone into anything and in no place in America have they "avoided disciplining students who need disciplining"(that distinction is aimed for the Walker Admin who thanks to the far right activist judges, have made sure there is no disciplining of people who need it - but that is another post).
The Moonie publication Washington Times even weighed in via Marco Rubio:
Mr. Rubio said the guidance should be revised “to ensure that schools appropriately report violence and dangerous actions to local law enforcement,” while others have encouraged Mrs. DeVos to repeal it outright. In the tragic aftermath of the murders in Florida, which were preventable, we simply cannot take the chance that other school districts, in response to a Dear Colleague letter issued in 2014 by the Obama administration, will continue to enforce or will implement the disastrous race-based, discipline-free program put in place in December of 2013 by Broward County,” William Perry Pendley, president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, said Friday in a letter to Mrs. DeVos.
Now that we see how shallow the echo chamber is in Wisconsin, let us take a quick look at actual reality.
1. The Dear Colleague letter was a guideline, not a regulation. There as no - do this or else attached.
2. Yes there is an imperative to look at discipline in our schools along with the opportunity gap. It does not make logical sense, that children of color are the ones causing disruptions or are incredibly more of a discipline problem, than the white kids. Anymore than it makes logical sense that there are more unarmed black men who get shot by police than any other race. Yet the results speak for themselves.
Should we accept institutional racism? Or should we just not be surprised that a subsection of people who have waged a war on science would also have no interest in logic?
3. The only people in Wisconsin who have been advocating for a "consequence-free environment" are the people knee deep in Walkergate and the John Doe investigation, and while that turned into a consequence free work place for our Governor and it only cost $1,000,000,000 in legal fees for Mr. Walker.
4. Unfortunately, the students in Wisconsin face consequences every single day. When Scott Walker and his crew in Fitzwalkerstan,
cut almost $2 Billion dollars from public education, the children have faced daily consequences. The consequences from a massive teacher exodus of veteran teachers, who took not only years and years of institutional knowledge with them but also the ability to mentor younger teachers on the finer points of the job that they do not get in college.
Our children have faced the consequences of a poorly funded public education system that hurts children in terms of higher class sizes, less Educational Assistants, less professional development, fewer of our best and brightest college students majoring in education, crumbling buildings and longer bus rides, among other things.
Our children also have had to suffer the consequences of less needed services in the community, their parents being forced to work more than one job and spending less time with the kids, the increased cost of and lack of healthcare causing more stress and worse sickness and disease amongst families.
5. I am not blind, I understand when our friends on the right talk about children needing "discipline" they mean punish the kids of color. However, for most of us,
"discipline" means -
: training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character
Training, not punitive punishment, is how you make long term change. It is why the recidivism rate in our prisons is almost 70%. The days of the old wild west are gone for a reason.
6. Finally, and this is the biggest, is that ACT10 absolutely plays a big part on the chaos in the schools now.
As Dave Zweifel says, it absolutely IS the issue.
The far right Walkerites, first order of business when they were elected was to make sure that their biggest opposition, the public workers unions, and more specifically the teacher's unions. So they had to be punished.
Act10 was secretly forced upon us as a way to make sure that the teachers had no say in their workplace. If they made less money, they would have less money to send to the Democrats running for election, which would in turn help the Republicans stay in office.
However, the biggest problem is that Republicans have no idea what unions actually do. Whole they for sure do help their members to have a fair wage, they also advocate for better working conditions, safer classrooms, well being and safety of members, the rights of students, especially individual students and those who need more advocacy, because they spend every day with the kids.
When Scott Walker forced a pay cut on the teachers, he also silenced their voice in every aspect of the school system.
Now it is more than ironic that they are trying to tell everyone that we should listen to the teachers, they know what is best in the classrooms.
#7 - Extra Credit - There will be talk that restorative justice was the reason a teenager was killed in a school in New York, based on a "report"
by some right wing extremist group T74. There is no more casual relationship between this death and Restorative Justice as there is between this death and algebra.
I am not here to say that our public school system is perfect with no room for improvement. That is not realistic, nor is it a prevailing thought anywhere.
However, our public school system is the best thing we have, is the one equalizer in our society and has proven it not only works, but it works well.
It just needs to be fully funded and tweeked.
The best first step for that would be to realize that the WILL's, Blaska's, National Review's, Betsy DeVos's of the world have no interest in anything but their own bank account and ruining public education.
They are on the wrong side of America and the wrong side of history.
Vote PUBLIC EDUCATION in November!
Posts
