Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Suspensions/expulsions key to building charter school 'culture'

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Suspensions/expulsions key to building charter school 'culture':

Suspensions/expulsions key to building charter school 'culture'

"Charter schools should not be allowed to 'expel' their way to better performance if they are truly public schools." -- Ald. Bob Fioretti

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. attorney general's office released national guidelines on student discipline codes, acknowledging many urban school districts' zero-tolerance policies have created school-to-prison pipelines.

Chicago schools CEO Byrd-Bennett claims she wants to reduce expulsions and suspensions that hit hardest on African-American students. She claims that she "inherited a really punitive zero-tolerance code of conduct." But in fact, every district she has led, from Cleveland to Detroit became notorious for black-student expulsions and suspensions.

BBB and Rahm's problem now is, they're both afraid to take on the privately-run charter schools where, according to this morning's Sun-Times, students in Chicago are 11 times more likely to be expelled than students in traditional schools. They've both made their total political investment in the expansion of charter schools, at the expense of publicly-run neighborhood schools but can't move the needle on expulsion/suspension numbers without