DeVos Department of Ed Cancels Obama-Era Guidance Aimed at Reducing Racial Disparities in School Discipline
Here is some news you may have missed. On Friday, December 21, as everybody took off for the holidays, the Education and Justice Departments rescinded Obama-era school discipline guidance designed to address vast racial disparities in school discipline practices. Particularly important was the purpose of the guidance: reducing overuse of suspension and expulsion, encouraging schools to handle discipline policies in ways that keep students in school, and developing restorative discipline programs to create a safe school climate. Officials in the Trump administration, including Betsy DeVos and her Federal Commission on School Safety, continue to endorse punitive discipline.
The Washington Post‘s Laura Meckler describes the Obama-era guidance and the recent decision to cancel it: “The guidance, which was not binding, put school systems on notice that they could be violating federal civil rights law if students of color were disciplined at higher rates than white students. It laid out scenarios and explained how they would be viewed by federal authorities. And it offered suggestions for alternatives to discipline that could foster positive school climates.
Why did DeVos’s Federal Commission on School Safety recommend rescinding the guidance? Meckler explains: “In its report, the school safety commission criticized the guidance as an example of federal overreach and said it had created unsafe school environments by allowing bad behavior to go unpunished. The report also attacked the legal principle of ‘disparate impact’ that the guidance relied upon—that discrimination can be proved by examining the effects of policies, not just the intention.”
Meckler continues, quoting Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), who is the new chair of the education CONTINUE READING: DeVos Department of Ed Cancels Obama-Era Guidance Aimed at Reducing Racial Disparities in School Discipline | janresseger
