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Carol Birks: We’re learning from schools that are doing this right.
New Haven’s black students are more than four times as likely to be kicked out of class as its white students — a disparity that’s even worse for boys.
That finding is based on the Independent’s analysis of disciplinary actions that a school administrator presented at Monday evening’s Board of Education meeting.
School board members and administrators called the figures “sobering.”
The inside look at the school system’s figures fulfilled a promise that Superintendent Carol Birks made during the search process to share the district’s data more widely. But in the first glimpse at the numbers this school year, school board members didn’t like what they saw, especially in the racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions.
“These numbers are disturbing. That’s why we’re presenting it to you,” Birks said. “We have a collective responsibility to make sure that students are getting what they need academically and behaviorally. We are conducting a school-quality review to drill down into what’s occurring and identify goals.”
After the first marking period this school year, sanctions handed down by the district fell disproportionately on African-American kids, especially on the boys.
Among the 494 suspensions and 1 expulsion, 43.3 percent went to African-American boys, 19.0 percent to African-American girls, 20.1 percent to Hispanic boys and 10.9 percent to Hispanic girls, said Michele Sherban, the district’s research supervisor. Only 3.2 percent went to white boys and 1.9 percent went to white girls, she added.
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Michele Sherban reports her findings.
Those rates don’t come close to matching the district’s demographics, based on last year’s enrollment.
Black children, who made up only 38 percent of the student body, are the most overrepresented among the students being kicked out of class. They are roughly 1.64 times more likely to be suspended than the average student.
Hispanic children, who made up a plurality of the student body at 45 percent, are slightly underrepresented in the proportion of suspensions. They are two-thirds less likely to be suspended than the average student.
White and Asian students, meanwhile, are very underrepresented in the proportion of suspensions. White students are two-fifths less likely and Asian students are one-tenth less likely to be suspended than the average student.
“As an African-American and a mother, I have got to stay that I’m trying to wrap my head around this suspensions by gender, race and ethnicity. The male African-American number, it’s just off the charts,” said Mayor Toni Harp. “I’m very disturbed by this number. It says we should be doing something differently than we are currently doing it.”
Figuring out exactly what to do was tougher for the city’s leaders. Harp called for a panel to investigate “why there is such a failure to adjust to school by this population.”
Board member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur said the starting point was painfully obvious to her, as the mother of two black children.
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So far this school year, the total number of suspensions is down slightly.
“We need to start looking into how black males are viewed from pre-kindergarten,” she said. “I have a girl and I have a boy, and I see the difference. I had to speak to the teachers from day one, because my son was getting treated differently for the same things that I would see with my daughter or someone who wasn’t a black male. This is happening from the gate, and it continues to spiral out of control — until you have a middle-school male who is viewed as a threat, who is viewed as unable to achieve, as someone who is not going to be anything.
“We have to be intentional, so we don’t have this culture in our midst anymore,” Jackson-McArthur continued. “This is a problem, and this illustration of it is heartbreaking. I went through it myself.”
Superintendent Birks said she agrees that all school employees need training in being culturally responsive and recognizing trauma. But she added that the district currently can’t offer that.
“We need to create a culture. That comes with education for our staff,” she said. “It’s more of a comprehensive view that we have to approach, which we right now don’t have the capacity to do.”
Darnell Goldson, the board’s president, asked Sherban to provide disaggregated numbers at the next meeting, listing the number expulsions, out-of-school suspensions and in-school suspensions by race, gender and offense.
Other sources of data collected by the federal government suggest that New Haven’s disparities are largely consistent across all forms of serious discipline and have been that way for several years.
In 2015, not a single white, Asian, Native or multi-racial student was expelled, while 37 black and 20 brown students were permanently kicked out.
Out-of-school suspensions collectively caused African-American kids to miss 5,230 school days and Hispanic kids to miss 2,200 school days.
Most of the offenses were for brawling without a weapon, totaling 1,252 incidents. Other common offenses included threats of a physical attack without a weapon (182), robbery without a weapon (43), and fighting with a weapon (23).
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Tamiko Jackson-McArthur: My kids were treated differently.
Even as racial disparities persist districtwide, some schools have all but phased-out suspensions, preferring to resolve behavioral issues through other means, including restorative practices that challenge students to take responsibility for their actions.
So far this year, no students were kicked out of class at six schools, Sherban said. Those are Celentano Biotech, Health and Medical Magnet; Columbus Family Academy; John S. Martinez Sea & Sky STEM Magnet; Truman School; West Rock STREAM Academy; and Worthington Hooker School.
Superintendent Birks said that the district needs to learn more from those schools.
“Of course, the goal is to use more restorative practices at large, as a system, not to suspend for every infraction. We need to ensure that we are providing students with the social-emotional supports they need,” she said. “We are going to go to schools, like Martinez and others, to ask them to share the practices that they’re using with all of us, so we can use those pockets to repeat the excellence they’re demonstrating.”
I think the questions should be...
1) Are other demographics getting away with the same offenses without suspension?
2) Do the percentages of suspension correlate with behavior influencing external factors like poverty?