Heather Mac Donald Blasts ‘Ludicrous’ Obama-Era School Discipline Policy that Turned Schools into War Zones By Debra Heine
https://pjmedia.com/trending/heather-mac-donald-blasts-ludicrous-obama-era-school-discipline-policy-turned-schools-war-zones/
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to scrap a controversial Obama-era education regulation that penalized schools for having disparate rates of discipline and turned school districts across the country into war zones.
The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice issued the federal directive jointly in 2014, warning public school districts receiving federal funding that they “could face investigation and funding cuts if they fail to reduce statistical ‘disparities’ in discipline by race,” the New York Post reported.
After Mayor de Blasio adopted the more lenient school discipline standards in early 2015, “more schools saw fighting, disrespect, drugs, gang activity,” said Max Eden, an education policy expert and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
While NYC school suspensions are down, crime has spiked in the city’s public schools, including major crimes such as robbery and arson, new NYPD data show. The current academic year has seen the first school murder in more than 20 years — a stabbing at a Bronx high school — and the first time a gun was fired inside a school in more than 15 years. What’s more, new state Education Department data reveal there were more rapes and other sex crimes at NYC public schools during the 2017-2018 school year than any year since 2007.
The Obama-era school discipline policy received fresh scrutiny in the wake of the Parkland school shooting when critics said it prevented police from using available tools that could have stopped it.
The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Friday night that the policy was built “on the theory that the only possible reason why black students may be suspended at higher rates than white students is teacher bias.”
Mac Donald explained that schools were warned by the Obama administration that they would lose federal funding and be taken to court unless they got their suspension and expulsion rates down.
As a result, “schools simply stopped imposing completely legitimate consequences for very serious forms of school disorder,” she said.
“The premise underlying this Obama policy was completely false,” she continued. “It assumes without even trying to prove that there can be no behavioral disparities between black and white students.”
Mac Donald explained that there is a reason why black students are suspended at three times the rate of their white peers. CONTINUE AT SITE
Comments are closed.
