Please send in your letters of support today! The hearings on TWO critical bills to Fix School Discipline are next week! Letters are due tomorrow, Wednesday, April 24, by 5 pm for SB 744, which will protect the due process rights of students involuntarily transferred to county community or community day schools and also closes a loophole ... Read More
This week, the Assembly Education Committee voted unanimously to move ahead with AB 420, which restricts the use of “willful defiance” in schools. Even though current law sites 23 other reasons for suspension and expulsions, “willful defiance” is often seen as a catch-all, and accounts for 53% of all school suspensions. New data around “willful defiance” ... Read More
California educators, community organizations and students are rolling up their sleeves to make common-sense school discipline changes. Many are already reporting amazing results: more students in class and learning, fewer behavioral problems on campus, fewer suspensions and expulsions, and improved school climates. Do you want to learn lessons from successful educators and find out how ... Read More
Congratulations! AB 420 passed out of the Assembly Education Committee today with a unanimous vote and bipartisan support. The hearing was packed with students, community leaders, parents and educators standing in support as teacher and Coordinator of School Culture and Climate from Davidson Middle School told the Committee, “Suspension alienates the very students who most ... Read More
UCLA’s Monday release of their report Out of School & Off Track: The Overuse of Suspensions in American Middle and High Schools gained a lot of of media attention throughout the digital, print and televised world. This cross-section of media, both locally and nationally, is an exciting indication of a widespread desire to examine the way punitive ... Read More
A brand-new national report out today from UCLA’s Civil Rights Project reveals that the use of harsh school discipline has increased across the country. African American and Latino students, students with disabilities, and English-language learners are more likely to face harsh school discipline than other students. Even one suspension in 9th grade doubles the risk ... Read More
Today, UCLA’s Civil Rights Project released a new report highlighting the overuse of suspensions and the serious implications that it has on students’ trajectories including graduation rates, achievement scores, life outcomes and incarceration rates. The report looks at data from over 26,000 U.S. middle and high schools during the 2009-2010 academic year. Its findings show ... Read More
In Oakland, schools have employed restorative justice practices as an alternative to ‘”zero-tolerance” policies. Eric Butler is a coordinator of restorative justice for Ralph J. Brunche High School. We highlighted Mr. Butler and Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) in our Fix School Discipline Toolkit The restorative justice program at Ralph J. Brunche promotes strong ... Read More
An excellent historical look at racial disparity in one town’s school-to-prison-pipeline. In Meridian, Mississippi, the Department of Justice initiated a case review of the town during the 2007-2008 school year, confirming that African-American students were treated more harshly than their white counterparts. During one six-year period studied, students were arrested for such simple things as ... Read More
Two new articles in the Christian Science Monitor focus on the school-to-prison-pipeline and restorative justice models. “School suspensions: Does racial bias feed the school-to-prison pipeline” looks nationwide, at schools’ disparity in suspension and expulsion rates for different groups and why that happens. Read more… The related article, “Restorative justice: One high school’s path to reducing ... Read More
