Comments on: Feds’ crusade on disproportionate minority school discipline rates

By: Back to school roundup - Overlawyered

Back to school roundup - Overlawyered — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 04:30:17 +0000

[…] on pressure for race quotas in school discipline [Casey Cheney, Heartlander, quotes me; earlier here, here, […]

By: Maryland roundup - Overlawyered

Maryland roundup - Overlawyered — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:15:08 +0000

[…] you think the current federal crusade on disparate minority school discipline rates is unreasonable, check out the Maryland state board […]

By: PointOfLaw Forum

PointOfLaw Forum — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:08:27 +0000

The soft bigotry of low expectations…

In April, we complained that the Obama administration’s push to use “disparate impact” to encourage schools to discipline misbehaving African-American students less often was both undercovered by the media and potentially disastrous to both public s…

By: Jim Collins

Jim Collins — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 22:04:14 +0000

This reminds me of the City Councilwoman in Pittsburgh a few years ago. She was complaining that too many Blacks and not enough Whites were being arrested in her district. She had statistics that showed that 85% of the people who were arrested in her district were Black. She didn’t care when it was pointed out to her that her district WAS 87% Black.

By: Melvin H.

Melvin H. — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 20:49:44 +0000

Hugo, if you pixelate or otherwise alter footage somehow to hide the race of those involved, how do you tell if there is any racial disparity in discipline to begin with? What or how they wear their clothes?

By: Kurt

Kurt — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 10:29:19 +0000

So if we combine disparate-impact with Title IX it would mean that the same number of girls need to be disciplined. What are the chances of that happening?

By: gasman

gasman — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 18:11:36 +0000

Alternate interpretation:
Relative to the rates of actual transgression, minorities are suffering from disproportionately low rates of discipline. As a result, they persist in having high rates of maladaptive behaviors in schools, resulting in poor academic achievement, poor job skills, and escalation of unsocial activities which translates to increased rates of crime outside of school with subsequent conviction and incarceration. Ultimately this practice of soft expectations and weak corrective action early in life leads to the persistence of weak education and job skills, poverty, and crime in the minority communities.

By: William Nuesslein

William Nuesslein — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 08:25:35 +0000

I think that Cunningham above missed the point (or maybe I did). Disparate-impact does not look at individual events but at cumulative counts. All that cameras would show is that the disparate-impact resulted from disparate behavior.

C-span had two programs in tandem a couple of days ago. One program was on stand-your-ground laws. People are upset that a child (17 years old and capable of assault) was killed by a white guy. The other program had mayors discussing the shooting deaths of children under 5 in their cities by black gang bangers.

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 01:04:08 +0000

If the Feds want to argue that a school district is unfairly disciplining students by race, they should pay to install surveillance cameras in all classrooms and common areas where disputed cases are likely to arise. Does software exist to alter video footage so the race of alleged perpetrators, victims, and disciplinarians is not clear? A panel looking at racially sanitized videos could clarify whether the bias is in the school administration, or in their accusers.

By: Bumper

Bumper — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 18:51:09 +0000

The previous attempt to right this supposed wrong was called Zero Tolerance, and it’s failure has been covered many times over the years in this blog.

This too will fail, but what it most unfortunate is that it is being done in an effort to curry black support for Obama for the up coming election.