Oakland Pushout
By: Makaylah Dixon
What is Pushout?
Pushout is a term used for the punitive discipline practices used by schools, which exclude students from class and too often expel them entirely. A student leaves a school, often with the school’s encouragement.
My take on Pushout
Pushout has been used as a discipline to victimize Black students and specifically Black girls. Because this has been going on for a long time, I can understand why most people just brush the topic aside or completely ignore it, since pushout is just as common as detention in certain areas. The suspension rate for Black girls in the 2011–2012 school year was six times higher than the suspension rate for White girls. Meaning, pushout is most likely targeted rather than a coincidental experience.
Black students being targeted and forced into the school-to-prison pipeline is a significantly persistent problem in the education system. Dewey Academy is a continuation school in Oakland, California, which housed the third most Black seniors. The data from our A-G report gave us a visual of pushout in Oakland. In the 2019–2020 school year, out of 69 black students, only 24 graduated. Out of those 24 students, none were A-G eligible to apply for a University. This illustrates the large effect that pushout has on Black students in our Oakland education system.
What hurts me the most is that McClymonds High School is only two spots below Dewey Academy. My cousin goes to that school and I don’t know if he has been affected by pushout, but both of us are way too close to finishing high school for us not to continue into college. I don’t want to know that the cousin that I have grown up will be stumped in his education because of racial profiling and implicit bias. It is really stupid that as a 16, almost 17-year-young woman, I’m worried about this. This should be the least of my worries, but it isn’t. Even though we go to two completely different schools, there is still a possibility that we won’t graduate college the same year.
