Education: The FEAR factor

Nicole Newman
Jul 25, 2017 · 6 min read

My sons, ages 14 and 12, are still affected by the implementation of zero tolerance policies implemented on the wake of the Columbine incident. CNN.com wrote “On April 20, 1999 12 students and 1 teacher were killed by students Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18. The pair made home videos prior to the attack making references to what they were going to do and apologizing to their parents for it. Harris and Klebold killed themselves with gunshot wounds to the head in the school’s library at approximately 12:08 pm on the day of the shootings. SWAT teams entered the school 47 minutes after the shootings started. Five hours passed before law enforcement declared the school under control. The Columbine shootings rank as one of the worst mass shootings in US history as well as one of the deadliest episodes of school violence.”

On the date of the Columbine incident, April 20, 1999, neither one of my sons were born. This is why math matters. National Center for Education statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372, wrote “In fall 2016, about 50.4 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools. Of these, 35.4 million will be in prekindergarten through grade 8 and 15.0 million will be in grades 9 through 12.” The probability that a student would be shot for this example, in a United states high school is 1/15,000,000 = .000000667 a ridiculously small percentage which caused mass hysteria of fear for a majority of schools to implement “ZERO-tolerance policies”. This policy further fueled the school to prison pipeline for black and brown students.

Even though the culprits of the columbine incident were white and not Muslim, my sons were targeted for “terrorism” because of their skin color and/or religious affiliation not at 1 school but at 3 separate schools. This is the documentation of 1 such incident “Lately XXX has been making jokes about killing or cutting people. As staff we take jokes like this very seriously, because these are considered to be terroristic threats. If he continues to demonstrate this type of behavior it will result in him being dropped from the XXX program.”

My response “XXX does not understand the nature of terrorism in elementary school. As adults I find it quite sad that you would consider dropping XXX from the program, without a behavior modification because you are in fear of a child.” In 2016, at one such suspension meeting after they brought up the Columbine incident, I said, “You have a policy implemented for an incident that my boys know NOTHING about? I refuse to criminalize my sons for a crime they did NOT commit.” It is become highly regular to suspend and expel brown and black students for what schools interpret as “terrorist threats” — i.e. jokes. SERIOUSLY? What I recognize is that people are human. The mass hysteria that thrives on FEAR is at play.

At another charter school for a student in the 6th grade, I was given the choice of suspension for words that were turned into a “terroristic threat” on the 3rd week of school. Instead, of accepting a suspension I decided to withdraw the student. As a mother of two sons, I know how the education/prison system is weighted against their success. I would rather take my chances on a protective environment at home/school than allow the system to incarcerate their minds for going against the grain of not operating in FEAR.

http://www.apmreports.org/story/2016/08/25/reforming-school-discipline by Catherine Winter wrote “The president of the American Federation of Teachers recently issued a remarkable mea culpa. For years, Randi Weingarten supported “zero-tolerance” policies in schools. Under zero tolerance, students who break certain school rules face mandatory penalties, including suspension and referral to law enforcement. The approach gained popularity during the 1980s, and by the mid-1990s, most school districts in the United States had adopted some form of zero tolerance.”

https://www.aft.org/about/leadership/randi-weingarten wrote “Randi Weingarten is president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, which represents teachers; paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; higher education faculty and staff; nurses and other healthcare professionals; local, state and federal government employees; and early childhood educators. Prior to her election as AFT president in 2008, Weingarten served for 12 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, representing approximately 200,000 educators in the New York City public school system, as well as home child care providers and other workers in health, law and education.”

But at the end of 2015, Mrs. Weingarten wrote an editorial in American Educator saying those policies had been a failure. “When you see that you’re wrong, you have to say that you’re wrong and apologize for it,” Weingarten said in an interview.

Zero-tolerance policies were supposed to make schools safer and make discipline fair. But in practice, the policies “didn’t help us get to the safe and welcoming school environments that every parent wants for his or her child,” Weingarten said.

Across the country, schools are moving away from zero tolerance and trying to reduce the number of students they’re suspending. The turnaround is a response to a growing body of research showing that zero-tolerance policies resulted in a disproportionate number of kids of color suspended, expelled, and referred to law enforcement.

Schools have little choice but to change. In 2014 (during the Obama administration), the federal Departments of Education and Justice issued a letter to state education commissioners warning that districts continuing to have a pattern of disproportional discipline risk a federal civil rights action. Already, a number of districts around the country are facing complaints or have entered into settlements with the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights. Weingarten said changes in discipline policies need to be accompanied by training and support for teachers.

“We can’t go from zero tolerance to zero discipline,” she said. Some school districts are finding some success in reducing racial gaps in discipline and maintaining order by taking different approaches to discipline, such as restorative justice.

In Denver, Tim Turley teaches teachers how to use restorative practices rather than removing kids from the classroom. He said he often meets with skepticism from teachers in his workshops. He reminds them that suspension is a temporary solution. They can remove a student, but “they always come back,” Turley said. Turley said suspension is a hollow threat for most kids. “Kids who are suspended don’t sit home and read the Bible to learn the errors of their ways,” he said. “To them a suspension is a legal three- to five-day holiday.”

Research bears out Turley’s observation. Recent studies show that suspension is ineffective at changing students’ behavior and has serious long-term repercussions.

“When you deny kids learning time they fall behind academically because they’re not in school,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at UCLA. “Many times there’s no provision to make up work you missed because you were in trouble. But, secondly, the longer you’ve been put out the more discouraged you become.”

While the practice is zero-tolerance for “terroristic threats” (in order to prevent the highly improbable occurrence of another Columbine incident), in practice, it has been unevenly distributed doing nothing to change the behavior of the students. Suspension/explusion is not a cure. Instead of designing a policy based social and emotional behavior to understand and address student feelings, the zero-tolerance policy has increased the school to prison pipeline of black and brown students.

Thank you Mrs. Weingarten for recognizing zero-tolerance policies have been a failure because they were based on FEAR. Now communities have to recognize the role emotions play on learning and their environments. It is time to REMOVE such policies that were poorly designed and hastily implemented without solutions in mind. I believe when parents are included in the solution, we can and we will do better. #parentpower

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