A13-YEAR-OLD student in Orange County, Fla., was suspended for 10 days and could be banned from school because he tossed a rubber band onto his teacher's desk after the teacher demanded he hand it over. An 11-year-old was taken to a police station for bringing a plastic knife in her lunchbox to cut chicken; a 6 year-old was accused of "sexual harassment" after rushing out of the shower naked to tell the bus driver not to drive away. In Irvington, N.J., two 8-year-olds were arrested and charged with "making terrorist threats" for wielding a paper gun in class. These series of punishments are, unfortunately, not scenes from a pending sequel to George Orwell's 1984, but are instead examples of the many and monstrous failures of contemporary "zero-tolerance" policies in K-12 schools around our nation, policies that have long abandoned fairness and common sense.
While zero-tolerance policies in schools were initiated with good intent in 1994, they have come a long way since. Originally designed to deter students from bringing guns and deadly weapons to school, zero tolerance has in many counties now comes to encompass drug possession (which can include Certs and mouthwash), as well as all-encompassing categories such as "insubordination" and "disrespect," both of which are in obvious risk of being arbitrarily applied.
Indiana University Prof. Russell Skiba has provided some of the most reliable numbers on the subject; for example, in Milwaukee, between one-half and one-third of all middle and high school students were suspended at least once -- and "97 percent of infractions involved no weapons, drugs or alcohol." Such punishments are obviously detrimental to grades, as well as stressful on families who cannot afford to stay at home to watch their children. Inevitably, many of these students are left unsupervised in a time of justified frustration.
James Comer and Alain Poussaint, two of the nation's leading child psychologists, have stated that such overly harsh punishment "either destroys a child's spirit, has no effect at all, worsens the problem, or makes it more difficult for you to work with the child in school -- he or she no longer trusts you." Susan Black, an education research consultant, stated the obvious when saying that "these kids often interpret suspension as a one-way ticket out of school -- a message of rejection that alienates them from ever returning to school." Common sense is correct when predicting the result: Those victims of zero-tolerance decline academically, possibly drop out, and eventually acquire a taste for the ever growing demand in prison jumpsuits.
Furthermore, Skiba's data has brought to light more ominous byproducts of zero tolerance policies gone awry. First, it has been widely shown that minorities are more strongly affected by these policies than whites. "Opportunities Suspended," a report released by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and the Advancement Project, showed that in South Carolina's zero tolerance policies, "black children represented only 42 percent of public school enrollment, but 61 percent of those charged with a disciplinary code violation." While it may be asserted that these merely reflect disparities in socioeconomic conditions, Skiba's research indicates that minorities are disciplined more frequently and severely under the more subjective offenses, such as "disrespect." Arbitrary application of such categories (defined and punished according to the zero tolerance policies) clearly provide easy avenues for which prejudice, stereotyping and implicit racism can be expressed.
Given the drastically draconian route that zero-tolerance policies in many school counties have taken, it is no surprise that the American Bar Association felt obligated to issue a statement opposing zero tolerance, referring to it as a "one size fits all solution to all the problems that schools confront. It has redefined students as criminals, with unfortunate consequences." The state of our school systems is undoubtedly in trouble, and while the policies vary from county to county, the solution is practically the same. Students and parents alike must band together and challenge school boards to overturn their unjust, unfair and ultimately un-American zero-tolerance policies.
Sina Kian's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at skian@cavalierdaily.com.
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