Education Week 2/23/2011 issue

‘Disparate Impact’ Discipline Policy Criticized, p. 27

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, at its 2/11/2011 meeting, discussed the Obama administration’s efforts to reduce the overrepresentation of some racial and ethnic groups in school discipline cases.  Administration officials said that they were looking for intentional discrimination (“different treatment”) as well as disproportionate effects on a particular group (“disparate impact”), even though there may have been no intention of discrimination in the latter.  The goal is to make sure that schools are fairly meting out discipline.  One member of the Commission, Todd Gaziono, was concerned that this approach may put a heavy burden on the school to justify any disparity.

Some teachers have taken issue with this approach.  One resents having to give “a thought to disparate impact,”   viewing this as a constraint on effective discipline whenever he has to remove a disruptive student from class.  Another teacher complained about her district’s change in policies because of disparate impact.  She points out that when her district did away with penalties for students not attending class because of disparate impact, it puts an unfair burden on teachers to reteach the material and retest students when they are allowed to make up the work. 

Some school administrators backed the administration’s efforts, however, touting the approach called Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support, which reduced the proportion of African American males expelled from Rochester, NY, schools.  A new commissioner, Roberta Achtenberg, was sympathetic to the civil rights focus on disparate impact, but she also wants to look at whether the remedies actually work.  She wants to allay educators’ concerns that the federal government is interfering for the sake of “political correctness.”

[My thoughts:  This topic can be a political minefield for a teacher.  As teachers, we need to make sure that our disciplinary decisions are not influenced in any way by ethnic or racial stereotypes.  But we also need to be free to address actual behavioral issues that arise, without having to consider how our classroom management decisions will impact some administrator’s statistical scorecard.]