The following is the Letter of Transmittal and Executive Summary of a briefing on school discipline and disparate impact before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The full text of the briefing may be found at http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/School_Disciplineand_Disparate_Impact.pdf.
Although the briefing focuses on “schools and school districts,” it offers valuable insights for all educational institutions, including colleges and universities.
School Discipline and Disparate Impact Briefing Before The United States Commission on Civil Rights
Held in Washington, DC
Briefing Report
Letter of Transmittal
The President
The President of the Senate
The Speaker of the House
Sirs:
The United States Commission on Civil Rights (“Commission”) is pleased to transmit this report, School Discipline and Disparate Impact. The report is drawn from a briefing that the Commission held on February 11, 2011 that examined the effect that the U.S. Department of Education’s Fall 2010 Disparate Impact initiative has had on schools and school districts across the country. This federal initiative was implemented to look at differences in discipline outcomes between students of color and other similarly-situated students.
The initiative’s aim is to identify whether the application of exclusionary discipline policies has had a disparate impact on students of color. During the briefing the panelists, teachers and administrators from racially diverse public school districts described how their particular schools have responded to this initiative. The Commission inquired as to whether the schools have changed their policies and practices and what those changes have been. In addition, the Commission inquired into whether school districts maintain comprehensive data that allows them to track the effectiveness of their discipline policies; whether teachers are appropriately trained to implement these policies; and what other methods are being used by districts to evaluate the effectiveness of their policies. Finally, the U.S. Department of Education provided background information on its disparate impact initiative and how the disparate impact theory is being implemented in its enforcement work.
The briefing identified a common theme among most of the teachers. This is that disciplinary problems can be greatly reduced through individualized instruction based on the student’s capabilities, cultural sensitivity or competency, parental involvement and support, and effective school leadership. School administrators indicated that disciplinary problems could be reduced through consistent application of a transparent and uniform school-wide disciplinary policy. Many of the school administrators also indicated that they had successfully reduced discipline disparities and overall expulsions through the adoption of nationally-tested behavior management programs.
This report was unanimously approved on October 21, 2011 by Chairman Martin R. Castro, Vice Chair Abigail Thernstrom, and Commissioners Roberta Achtenberg, Todd Gaziano, Gail Heriot, Peter Kirsanow, David Kladney, and Michael Yaki.
For the Commission,
Martin R. Castro
Chairman
Executive Summary
The Commission held a briefing entitled, “School Discipline and Disparate Impact” on February 11, 2011 to examine the effect of the U.S. Department of Education’s disparate impact initiative announced in the fall of 2010 for schools and school districts across the country. The Commission asked teachers and administrators from racially diverse public school districts how they have responded to the new initiative; specifically, whether their teachers and administrators have changed their policies and practices as a result, and what those changes were. The Commission was interested also in whether the districts kept statistics to track the effectiveness of policies; how they train their teachers in implementing discipline policies; and what other means the districts used to evaluate whether their policies worked.
The Commission asked the U.S. Department of Education (ED or Department) to describe its disparate impact initiative and supply case documents indicating the manner in which the Department implemented disparate impact theory in its enforcement work. The Department’s civil rights enforcement unit, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), provided documents relating only to closed cases, which showed investigations that proceeded to resolution based initially on a disparate impact theory. The Department’s policy as stated during the briefing is that statistically disparate results create a presumption of discrimination that must be rebutted by the school or district with evidence that the school or district has a legitimate educational justification and that there are no equally effective alternative policies that would achieve the school’s educational goals. The Department indicated that it would continue to use disparate impact theory in its investigations, including those currently open, in addition to disparate treatment theory.
Teachers appearing before the Commission were Mr. Allen Zollman, Ms. Andrea Smith, Ms.Jamie Frank, Mrs. Louise Seng, and Mr. Patrick Welsh. Administrators appearing before the Commission were Ms. Suzanne Maxey, Principal at TC Williams High School in Alexandria City, Virginia; Dr. Osvaldo Piedra, Assistant Principal, East Lake High School, Pinellas County, Florida; Mr. Joseph Oliveri, Retired Director of Alternative Schools for the Austin Independent School District, Texas; Mr. Edward Gonzalez, Associate Superintendent, Department of Prevention and Intervention, Fresno Unified School District, Fresno County, California; Dr. Hardy Murphy, Superintendent, Evanston/Skokie District 65, Cook County, Illinois; Dr. Hertica Martin, Executive Director for Elementary and Secondary Education, Rochester Public Schools, Olmstead County, Minnesota; and Dr. Douglas Wright, Superintendent, San Juan School District, Blanding, Utah. Mr. Ricardo Soto, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education, appeared for the Department.
Points of agreement among most of the teachers were that disciplinary problems were greatly reduced among all students by attention to appropriate levels of difficulty in instructional materials, sensitivity to individual students and their backgrounds, parental involvement and support, and effective leadership by a school principal. Most, but not all of the teachers reported no effort by school administrators to interfere with classroom discipline, but some reported onerous procedural and paperwork burdens before any disruptive student could be removed from class.
Points of agreement among the school administrators were the importance of the following: telling students what the rules are; why the school has those rules, what the consequences are for violating those rules, and being consistent in applying the rules. Also effective in their view was maintaining an approach that sought ways to change the school to better meet the needs of the students, rather than inflexibly following a pre-set view or imposing zero-tolerance rules that students knew produced unfair results; training teachers in understanding different cultures and personalities; devising special programs for behaviorally high-risk students; instituting parent engagement and education programs; and/or adopting one of several nationally-tested behavior management programs that had reduced disparities and overall expulsions in other districts.
Two of the speakers (Dr. Wright, San Juan, Utah and Dr. Martin, Rochester, Minnesota) were administrators from districts currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for possible violations under the new discipline initiative. Dr. Wright’s district uses nationally-tested behavioral support programs mentioned by other speakers, expanded the role for guidance counselors, and instituted a student support system; Dr. Martin’s district uses some of the same techniques and nationally-tested programs discussed in the briefing. Mr. Soto of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) provided an overview the office’s work and mission, which is to ensure equal access to education through vigorous enforcement of civil rights. Mr. Soto stated that OCR’s disparate impact initiative stemmed from data showing a sharp increase in the numbers of students nationwide who were suspended or expelled, which OCR views as an indication of possible violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and addresses using both disparate treatment and disparate impact theories.