James Howard not convinced discipline plan will end racial disparities in Madison schools

Pat Schneider:

Madison school board member James Howard is not convinced a proposed Student Conduct and Discipline Plan will end a pattern of suspending and expelling disproportionately high numbers of African-American students.

"It's not clear to me that it will," Howard says. "I could never vote for a code that does not address those disparities and disproportionalities."

Howard, currently the school board's sole African-American member, is leading the board committee overseeing the revamp of the discipline plan.

The plan includes a chart that matches up examples of student misconduct with appropriate responses from teachers and school administrators. If a student's misbehavior escalates, the responses escalate as well. The stated goal of the plan is to give kids the "space to make mistakes, learn from them and receive support to make changes in their behavior."

But Howard says research shows that adopting positive behavior support models, while reducing the total number of suspensions and expulsions, does little to erase racial disparities. And while the proposed plan spells out step-by-step responses to misconduct, Howard says he is not yet convinced that component will address the inconsistencies in enforcing discipline between schools and even within schools.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 17, 2014 12:22 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas