School Discipline

I don't care about your skin color; if you act up in school, especially if you're interrupting the learning environment of others, there should be a penalty for that:

Legislation that supporters say will improve school discipline but critics say will kick more Black students out of school was adopted Wednesday by the state House. 

The N.C. House passed a bill that removes wording from state law that now lists inappropriate language, disrespecting teachers, dress code violations and minor fights as examples not to be deemed serious violations meriting a long-term suspension. 

Rep. John Torbett, a Gaston County Republican and primary sponsor of House Bill 188, said the change is needed because of how lax discipline has gotten in schools. 

“All it does is simply give teachers some, I guess, power back to control their classrooms,” Torbett said.

Meanwhile, California is going in exactly the opposite direction (with easily predictable results):

Instead of sending a student out of class for a minor infraction, teachers were encouraged to de-escalate by talking to the child quietly or writing them a note in class.

“We’re not just going to move the problem and kick the can down the road to somebody else,” Karigaca said.

The discipline models could be replicated throughout California public schools under legislation sponsored by State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley). Senate Bill 274 would permanently extend the ban on willful defiance suspensions in middle and high schools after 2025. Current law bans these suspensions permanently for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

When the earlier ban was put in place, some teachers said their classrooms became chaotic because students didn’t see consequences for misbehavior. Now, even some educators who support the policy say they understand why teachers may worry that they do not have the resources to safely implement it at higher grade levels with older, and sometimes physically larger, students.

“If you’re not taught basic tools to support and manage a classroom, then you are going to see behaviors escalate to a point where you might feel a little loss of control or safety in the environment that you’re supposed to support,” said Justine Bernacet, the lead seventh-grade teacher at KIPP Sol Academy, a charter middle school in East LA...

Oakland is among a handful of school districts — including Los Angeles, Pasadena and San Francisco — that have already ended willful defiance suspensions, which punish students for nonviolent acts such as ignoring the teacher, wearing a hoodie in class, talking back to a teacher or disrupting the class by tapping their feet. These disciplinary actions disproportionately affect Black, Latino and indigenous students, leading to higher dropout rates in these communities, according to a state report.  

Statements like that last one drive me nuts.  Are we to believe that California's teachers are racist and are targeting "Black, Latino and indigenous students", or might these students commit a disproportionate number of offenses?  And if the latter, why is that?

Sorry, "racist teachers" isn't the first answer I'd jump to.