Choking students out of school is never acceptable
Brutality does not teach accountability, on camera or off
W ORLEANS — Only people who believe that children are uneducable or not even children would slam, choke, jail and expel their non-compliance. When you believe all children can learn, you search for lessons that incite changes in thought processes and behaviors.
This national difference of opinion has drawn attention, and New Orleans is no exception. Last week, a parent told the Times Picayuneshe filed a complaint with the state Education Department after viewing a recording of Wilfred Wright, KIPP New Orleans Leadership Academy’s dean of students, putting her daughter in a chokehold and dragging her down the street. A school incident report says a staff member, who it would not identify, was breaking up a fight between two girls. The parent doesn’t have a copy of the video, but a screenshot of the video shows a staffer with his arm around a girl’s neck. The staffer was put on leave pending an investigation.
Let’s be clear. Slamming and choking students does not teach them how to be accountable; it teaches them how to slam and choke. But as this case unfolds, there will undoubtedly be people who will blame the student and her behaviors for the choking. That’s because videos that often corroborate students’ accounts of inappropriate restraints are often used to shame student victims in other situations.
The backlash aimed at the abused student at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina is so strong that it partially helped old video regain traction. In this years-old video recorded in a Chicago Vocational Career Academy classroom in 2011, a student verbally harasses and physically threatens a substitute teacher while the class laughs wildly. People are posting this and similar videos as evidence why uncontrollable students get the abuse they deserve.
Blaming students for classroom behavior reveals how little regard we have for black children as well as the teaching profession; people literally want black folk to disappear. Noted charter school advocate and leader Eva Moskowitz recently had to defend the use of a “got to go” list in one of her schools. For years, education rivals accused Moskowitz and other charter leaders of counseling or “pushing out” students in the name of creating a school culture of ‘no excuses’ and academic excellence. But harsh disciplinary practices aren’t confined to charter schools. As the South Carolina case shows, traditional schools will even use police tactics to rid themselves of blacks. Nevertheless, people don’t disappear. We can’t expel or slam our way to success.
But schools keep trying. The Council of State Governments Justice Center found disabled students, minority students and LGBT students are disproportionately suspended and expelled from school. What the data won’t show are the abuses that push students out of school without a suspension. It would be understandable if the KIPP student left the school after the choking. Maybe it’s our systems and not the people that are the problems.
The research consistently shows that “when students are removed Choking students out of school is never acceptable - The Hechinger Report: