Jeff Bryant and Amy Stuart Wells Show How Test-and-Punish Contributes to School Segregation
In an important and insightful piece yesterday for the Education Opportunity Network, How ‘Education Reform’ Perpetuates Racial Disparity, Jeff Bryant examines a new report (released late last week by the U.S. Department of Education) about racial disparities in public schools.
Bryant writes: “America was shocked, shocked, by new data from the U.S. Department of Education last week showing that a child’s education destiny in the nation’s public schools is strongly determined by race. As the report in the New York Times put it, the new data revealed that, ‘racial minorities are more likely than white students to be suspended from school….’ But racial disparities in the nation’s schools aren’t just about the discipline. As both the Times report mentioned… and Education Week reported, when students of color aren’t getting disproportionally kicked out of school, they are getting an inferior education.”
Bryant would like to see the Department of Education focus not so much on the presence of educational inequality as on its causes. He is also looking for some leadership to show us how these problems can be addressed: “Shocking data for sure… But surely one would think this data would prompt explanation. Not so much. In reporting the data, the Department itself found no fault and placed no blame. As a report in The Huffington Post stated, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan could only say, ‘this data collection shines a clear, unbiased light on places’ but not on any policies, people, or other causational factors.”
For more challenging and useful analysis, Bryant points us to a new report published by the National Education Policy Center, Seeing Past the Colorblind” Myth of Education Policy, a