CommenTerry: Volume Seventy-Eight | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Dr. Terry Stoops, who is the Director of Education Studies for the John Locke Foundation.

Do cultural, racial, or socioeconomic biases influence student discipline?

    Why do African American students receive a disproportionate number of short- and long-term suspensions from classroom teachers and administrators? Some have suggested that cultural, racial, and socioeconomic biases play a major role.

    Each year, the Consolidated Data Report includes data on school crime and violence, suspensions, expulsions, corporal punishment, reassignments for disciplinary reasons, alternative learning placements, and dropout rates. Despite slight overall increases across most categories in 2014-15, school crime, suspensions, and dropouts have been on the decline. But state education officials and leaders in the African American community remain concerned.

    African American students are still more likely than any other demographic to receive a short- or long-term suspension, both as a share of the racial/ethnic group and total. The number of short-term suspensions for African American students peaked at 149,654 in 2011. Five school years later, they received just over 118,100 short-term suspensions. Long-term suspensions have also been on the decline in recent years. The number of long-term suspensions for African American students in 2015 was less than half of what it was five school years earlier. But with a total of 601 long-term suspensions last year, African Americans far outnumber all other the demographics in this category.

    Even though fewer African American students have been given short- and long-term suspensions than in the past, NC Policy Watch reports that some are not content with the downward trends. Democratic Representatives Garland Pierce and Ed Hanes, N.C. Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson, and NC Public Schools Forum program director James Ford have raised concerns about the disproportionate number of African Americans who are suspended from school. But there is disagreement about why.

    Rep. Pierce and Superintendent Atkinson blame cultural differences for the disproportionate suspension of African American students. On the other hand, Mr. Ford points to "implicit racial bias," subconscious attitudes and beliefs that manifest themselves through one's outward behavior. Hanes suggests that widespread opinions about poverty and socioeconomic status are responsible. Momentous data and research limitations prevent us from determining whether these theories have merit.

    This year, 81 percent of teachers and 72 percent of administrators in North Carolina district schools are white. We may wish for more diversity in our workforce, considering that only around half of the state's public school students are white, but we have to accept the fact that it remains a racially homogenous group. That does not mean, however, that there is a stereotypical white teacher. Each teacher, regardless of race or ethnicity, has unique educational, instructional, and disciplinary experiences that shape his or her classroom practices.

    Indeed, public school teachers will support high-quality professional development that helps them improve their craft. But their support will evaporate the moment you begin accusing them of being culturally insensitive, racist (implicit or otherwise), or classist for trying to maintain order in their classrooms, a challenging task under the best of circumstances.

    Most importantly, how would schools create racially equitable disciplinary policies in the real world? The process of maintaining a disciplinary record that mirrors racial demographics would either require schools to discipline African American children less, punish students from other racial groups more, or simply abolish traditional methods of disciplining students. In all three cases, I believe that the emphasis is misplaced. Perhaps correcting behavior that impedes the educational process, not fidelity to demographics, should be the focus of student discipline.

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