Majority of Texas Middle and High School Students Suspended or Expelled: Repeated Suspensions Predict Later Involvement in Juvenile Justice System

In an unprecedented study of nearly 1 million Texas public secondary school students followed for more than six years, nearly 60 percent were suspended or expelled, according to a report released today by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center in partnership with the Public Policy Research Institute of Texas A&M University.

Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement features these other key findings:

Of the nearly 1 million public secondary school students studied, about 15 percent were suspended or expelled 11 times or more; nearly half of these students with 11 or more disciplinary actions were involved in the juvenile justice system.

Only three percent of the disciplinary actions were for conduct in which state law mandated suspensions and expulsions; the rest were made at the discretion of school officials primarily in response to violations of local schools’ conduct codes.

African-American students and those with particular educational disabilities were disproportionately disciplined for discretionary actions.

Repeated suspensions and expulsions predicted poor academic outcomes. Only 40 percent of students disciplined 11 times or more graduated from high school during the study period, and 31 percent of students disciplined one or more times repeated their grade at least once.

Schools that had similar characteristics, including the racial composition and economic status of the student body, varied greatly in how frequently they suspended or expelled students.

The analysis considered in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP) placements, and Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) placements. In-school suspensions ranged from a single class period to several consecutive days, and out-of-school suspensions averaged two days per incident. Students assigned to DAEP were there for 27 days on average; JJAEP students were off the school campus for an average of 73 days. Informal actions (e.g., detention, parent/teacher meetings) were not reported to the Texas Education Agency and were therefore excluded from study.

“One of the most important takeaways from the report is learning that the school a student attends largely influences how, when, or if a student is removed from the classroom for disciplinary reasons,” said Senator Florence Shapiro (R), chair of the Texas Senate Education Committee, and one of the lawmakers who supported the study. “The data suggests that individual school campuses often have a pronounced influence over how often students are suspended or expelled.”

“The report tells us that more than one in seven Texas middle and high school students have been involved with the juvenile justice system. We should ask whether teachers and principals, rather than police officers and judges, are best suited to discipline kids who commit minor infractions.” said Texas Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson, who is convening a meeting today in Austin to discuss the study’s findings.

This study is unprecedented in that it tracked not just a sample of students, but all seventh graders in the state for six years. Using multivariate analyses to control for more than 83 variables, the study was able to isolate the relationships between such factors as race and school disciplinary actions, suspensions/expulsions and juvenile justice contact, and discretionary actions and academic success measured by being held back a grade or dropping out.

Senator John Whitmire (D), chair of the Texas Criminal Justice Committee, said, “We need to maintain realistic expectations of what educators alone can accomplish in today’s challenging classrooms. At the same time, this report demonstrates that if we want our kids to do better in school and reduce their involvement in the juvenile justice system, we in the legislature need to continue looking into how teachers can be better supported and how the school discipline system can be improved.” Source

That guy can dance

Thrilled to see Chris Brown making a comeback

Waiting For a Culturally Relevant Education

Waiting For Culturally Relevant Education, Not Superman

As a recent documentary film suggests, many parents and educators have been “Waiting for Superman” to fix our broken public education system. He simply isn’t coming. Imhotep, however, has landed in Philly.

A public charter high school that graduated its first class in 2000, Imhotep is hard to miss if you live in Philadelphia. It’s based in a $10 million educational complex. It produces championship athletic teams. The student population of 558 is overwhelmingly black. No Imhotep student is left behind — they all go onto college. And every day, there’s an Imhotep wardrobe riot going on as many teachers and students don colorful African clothing.

For all its success in using “culturally relevant teaching,” the school hasn’t emitted so much as a dull bleep on the radar screens of education cognoscenti seeking replicable school reforms, leaving one to question whether the school is just “too African” for America.

However, culturally relevant teaching as practiced there might be worth another look as a method capable of reaching the nation’s students.

Named for the legendary ancient Egyptian genius from the third dynasty who is credited with inventing papyrus, designing pyramids and founding medicine, Imhotep is the kind of school where the principles of Kwanzaa are called upon every day, where self-determination is an article of faith, and where students learn to “take responsibility for yourself, your brothers and your sisters.”

“When I started Imhotep, I did a graphic that put the student in the middle and made sure everything was designed to meet the needs of the child, not the teachers’ or the administration’s or the institution’s,” said CEO and founder Christine Wiggins, who is called Mama Wiggins. “And I continually try to do that.”

This meant designing a curriculum that “centers” Imhotep students by valuing Africa as the birthplace of humanity and learning. Mama Higgins and her staff of 60 call the students “Nubians” and approach teaching as if academics originated in the motherland.

“Developmentally, children need to know they are descendants of great thinkers,” Wiggins said. “When you never show them anybody that looks like them and that hasn’t achieved anything, then they don’t believe that they can achieve anything.”

She added: “It’s not advantageous to put a child in the classroom and give him a textbook where the only pictures of people that look like him are people on their knees in chains and being whipped. We’re going to show them images of their great African fathers and mothers as leaders in math and science, so everything that I do is centered around that basic premise.”

Detractors see the African mash-up of academics as fraudulent, saying you don’t have to see yourself in a curriculum; you just have to learn, or you’ll suffer the consequences.

But the Imhotep formula appears to get results: for nine years straight, 100% of Imhotep students have gotten into college, Wiggins said, adding, “The average in the country is running about 30%.” Her students win entrance to between 5 and 20 colleges, giving them a wide choice of colleges to attend.

Incoming Imhotep students are not filtered. “The children who come to us are the ones who have not been ‘saved’ in traditional schools,” she said. “I do a dance if I get a child in grade nine who is reading on a sixth grade level. Usually they are reading on a fourth and fifth grade level.”

The Imhotep ethic, forged in hard work, is enough to give Geoffrey Canada, who was praised by President Obama and others for creating the successful 97-block education lab in central Harlem, goose bumps. Imhotep offers an advanced placement program, senior internships requiring students to work in a business, government or community based organization. It also organizes small student learning communities and puts students through cultural rites of passage.

In addition, Imhotep has college partnerships with Arcadia University, Community College, Cornell University, Drexel University, Florida A&M, Howard University, Cheyney University, Lincoln University and Temple University.

Mama Wiggins’s approach to education is rooted in research conducted by another Philadelphian: Gloria Ladson-Billings, author of “The Dreamkeepers” and a leader in educating African-American children.

In the late 1980s, Ladson-Billings grew frustrated with the paucity of information on black education. “The thing that was bugging me was everything I read said nobody could teach these kids,” she said. “When I was doing literature searches, I would put in the descriptors ‘African American education’ or ‘black education,’ and I would get back in a few clicks, ‘See culturally deprived,’ ‘See culturally deficient,’ ‘See disadvantaged,’ ‘See at risk.’ So what became clear to me is that there was no language of excellence regarding African American education at all. I knew that couldn’t make sense as an African American who had done okay.”

She set out to find “exceptional teachers.” She found eight in California and studied their teaching methods for three years, drawing conclusions as to why they were successful. Culturally relevant teaching was borne of this research.

“These are teachers who focused on the kids’ learning, focused on their developing their cultural competence, and the third piece that they helped kids develop is what I call socio-political consciousness. In other words, they’re able to answer what I call the ‘So what?’ question. And kids ask this all the time.

“Most teachers have terrible answers to that question. They say, ‘You’re going to need this [knowledge] next year. [Exceptional teachers] try to have kids understand that it’s not enough for you to be smart or culturally competent; you also have to be able to ask critical questions about the society – why it is that things are organized this way, what do we do with inequity.”

She added: “I think most people don’t really understand [culturally relevant teaching]. I think they don’t recognize that it is essentially not an attempt to have kids fit into an already unequal system. It’s really an attempt to help them develop the kind of critical skills that will allow them to challenge the system.”

In light of this, it’s not necessary to teach black-focused academics, she noted: “Putting Ben Banneker in the curriculum is kind of irrelevant,” referring to the black astronomer, mathematicians and surveyor who helped to survey Washington, D.C.

She also said white teachers are perfectly capable of conducting culturally relevant teaching. “What I saw one of the teachers do — and this was one of the white teachers — we were in the middle of the California textbook wars over what the race and ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians,” she said. “This woman said, ‘Let’s see if we can figure this out,” and these kids went to work on this project like nobody’s business, and their conclusion was that ancient Egypt was probably multiracial, but that race didn’t mean then what it means now. Probably what was more relevant was class identity — whether you were in the Pharaoh’s court or a peasant. And this was the sixth grade!”

Predominantly non-black schools must approach the subject of slavery carefully, she said. “We’re not immune to the denigration and the derogation of our culture. We know how it’s portrayed. The [black student] doesn’t want to be the focus and think, Oh God, here she is talking about slavery, so now everybody thinks it’s about me.”

Ladson-Billings firmly believes all students enter classrooms with their culture in tow, and that smart teachers will use culture as a learning tool, not dismiss it outright as one professor attempted to do with her: “I went to a class where the professor said if you didn’t appreciate Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, you were culturally deprived, to which I responded, if you didn’t appreciate James Brown, you were culturally deprived.”

Ladson-Billings notes that African-American students as a whole have lower student assessment scores, but she harbors skepticism of testing. “There was a huge disconnect between what the test constructors ask and what kids’ experiences are,” she said. Actual unused questions from a national assessment test asked whether a student would be willing to have a person of another race as a teacher or a barber. “When I interviewed the kids, they actually had had some experience [with non-black barbers], and their hair got all jacked up,” she said. These kids were bound to fail that question.

As for Afrocentric schools, there’s nothing wrong with them so long as they do right by students. “People get all upset when [someone says] they’re going to [build] something Afrocentric,” she said. “[People] say, ‘Well where are they going to live, in an Afrocentric world?’ Well every major city in this country has a French lyceum where the wealthiest kids go to school.”

Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Gregory Kane counts himself among the detractors of culturally relevant education. He doesn’t believe teachers need to paint pictures of black culture to make academics more digestible. “When I was a lad I did not have to ‘see’ myself in the curriculum,” he wrote in the San Francisco Examiner. “The only picture I needed to see was my mother’s foot being placed firmly up my derriere if I didn’t bring home good grades from school. You’d be amazed at how ‘relevant’ that made everything my teachers taught me.”

He added that culturally relevant teachers could end up teaching “absolute nonsense”: “I actually had someone try to convince me that such a thing as ‘Afrocentric math’ existed. ‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I assure you there is no ‘Afrocentric’ math, nor is there a ‘Eurocentric’ math or an ‘Asian-centric’ math. Math is simply math.”

Molefi Asante strongly disagrees. If there were a godfather of Afrocentricity, it would be Asante, founder of the first doctoral program in African American studies at Temple University.

“Yes, you can teach math [Afrocentrically] by centering the child in historical context,” Asante insists. “If I’m teaching a child about shapes and forms, I am at the very heart of the pyramid, which is African. I can center that child right there, and we can do a whole black thing about shapes and forms. I can talk about curves and lines by talking about how the Africans built the great Zimbabwe.”

“Children,” Asante said, “should not be renters of information; they should be owners of information. They should feel that the curriculum is theirs. This is us. We produced this. Mathematics? Oh yeah, the first mathematicians were Africans, and that’s a fact. They have to feel that sense that this is connected to me.”

A major problem in education today is the educators, Asante said. “When you come out of a school of education, you know how to do time sheets and lesson plans. But in terms of actually dealing with children and grounding them in their cultural experiences and exciting them to go further and deeper and longer in their tradition, it is rare.”

Meanwhile, African American children “sit in the classrooms on the margins,” he said. “They are never given the subject position, and never seen as actors or agents or creators of knowledge. They’re always going to get somebody else’s knowledge.”

He said Afrocentricity works because it engenders self-worth. “What’s working are those Afrocentric schools that have deliberately, consciously decided that the way to educate African American children is to ground them in their cultural experiences so that they like not only themselves, but that they like African culture. The problem with black children is they hate Africa, and if you hate Africa you won’t learn. That is the fundamental dictum that seems to be the problem. They have negative attitudes toward their history, their culture, and their people.”

Chicago police lieutenant disciplined for blogging about his superiors

Sounds like it's past time for the President of the Illinois NAACP to head to Chicago and give them a pass to save their City...

Police Lieutenant Blasts Department Superiors

A Chicago police Lieutenant is under fire for an Internet post that blasts the department’s leadership and the mayor.

“We are tired of a leaderless department. We are angry at an unsupportive mayor,” Lt. John Andrews wrote in a fiery critique of the department.

The post is titled, A City at War with Itself: Chicago - Fast Tracking to Anarchy.

Andrews argues that staff shortages, corruption and a leader he says the rank and file doesn't respect have all made the job of policing the streets of Chicago almost impossible.

"This is the very worst that I’ve seen this department.” Andrews said Tuesday in an interview with NBC Chicago. “We don’t have the capability of maintaining the social order in some of the Chicago neighborhoods. It’s taken its toll. Our people are tired, beat up, they’re undermanned, outgunned. It’s dangerous.”

Department brass didn't take too kindly to the post and hit Andrews with disciplinary action, claiming he "brought discredit to the Chicago police department."

"I don’t think leaders should sit and throw rocks at their respective agencies or at those who are actually trying to address those challenges," said Supt. Jody Weis

The president of the Chicago Police Lieutenants Association, however, is standing by Andrews.

"This is a constitutional issue infringing on his freedom of speech," said Bob Weisskopf in a written statement. "Just about every lieutenant believes in the spirit of what he wrote.”

Andrews began writing about a month ago, when Officer Michael Bailey became the third officer to be killed this summer. He claims morale in the almost 13,000-member force has hit an all-time low.

An internal affairs hearing scheduled for Friday will determine whether Andrews, a 26-year member of the force, will be able to keep his job. Source

Read Lt. John Andrews' entire post here.

Peoria has logged 17 homicides this year

As of Sunday, Peoria has logged 17 homicides this year, already tying last year's total. Here are the victims, in descending chronological order:

17. Anthony Johnson, 43, was shot multiple times Sunday outside the residence of his sister-in-law, Angela Johnson, 40, at 1215 N. Frink St. Angela and Johnson's stepson Justin Stanley, 28, also were shot and were transported to the hospital with what police called non-life-threatening wounds.

16. Orlando Davis, 30, was shot July 11 in the 2700 block of West Trewyn Avenue in the Harrison Homes. Another man also was shot during the incident. Davis' father had been shot hours earlier in the 2100 block of West Howett Street.

15. Adrian Ortega, 19, was shot June 24 behind his home at 912 N. Garfield Ave.

14. Walter Holmes Jr., 21, was shot June 17 in the 2700 block of West Trewyn Avenue in the Harrison Homes. A woman also was shot in the chest during the incident, which may be related to a separate shooting hours earlier in the 2800 block of West Wiswall Street.

13. Willie Martin, 36, died June 13 of injuries sustained in a fight at 1302 W. John H. Gwynn Jr. Ave. earlier that day. Six people have been charged with mob action or other offenses related to the death, though none face a charge of murder.

12. Orvette Davis, 41, was found dead of apparent strangulation May 13 in an alley between the 1400 blocks of Northeast Perry Avenue and Northeast Monroe Street. Edjuan Payne, 40, has been charged with murder and is in custody awaiting trial.

11. Taji Cross, 20, was found dead April 27 in her apartment at 1508 W. Tiffany Drive. An autopsy showed she died from strangulation.

10. Nick Renfro, 20, was shot May 16 outside his mother's Taft Homes apartment. Joyce Renfro also was shot in the leg during the incident but survived. Police continue to search for Dominick "Hammer" Sanders, 22, who is accused of the slaying.

6, 7, 8, 9. Sisters Youlandice Simmons, 24, and Brianna Simmons, 22, as well as Darresse Roddy, 19, died in a fire April 21 at 1212 N. University St. Darryl Miller Jr., 2, died from his injuries the next day. Aunterrio Barney, 33, of Chicago has been charged with murder and arson for the deaths and remains in custody pending trial.

5. Abdallah Kattoum, 31, was shot March 30 at Peoria Food Stop, 728 E. Frye Ave. Keith A. Little Jr. has been charged with first-degree murder, armed violence and armed robbery.

4. Jasmine Brittine, 19, was shot March 21 during an argument outside 2030 S. Oregon St. in the Harrison Homes. Preston D. Marizetts, 18, has been charged with murder and is in custody awaiting trial.

3, 2. Dorothy McDonald, 83, and her son, Stephen McDonald, 65, died in an arson fire discoveredMarch 16 at their home at 207 NE Rock Island Ave.

1. Martha Thomas, 38, was stabbed multiple times Jan. 19 in the 800 block of Northeast Adams Street. Clarence R. Thomas, her estranged husband, has been arrested for the slaying. He remains in custody awaiting trial.

Report: Percentage of high-poverty schools rises

The percentage of public schools where more than three quarters of students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch--a key indicator of poverty--has increased in the past decade, and children at these schools are less likely to attend college or be taught by teachers with advanced degrees.

The findings come from a special report on high poverty schools included in the 2010 Condition of Education study, which reports on a broad range of academic indicators across K-12 and higher education.

The U.S. Department of Education report released Thursday found that the percent of high poverty schools rose from 12 to 17 percent between the 1999-2000 and 2007-2008 school years, even before the current recession was fully felt. By comparison, the overall poverty rate for children increased from 17 to 18 percent, leading researchers to believe that that a higher percentage of poor kids were signing up for the meal program.

In all, there were 16,122 schools considered high poverty.

Students at these schools face a number of disadvantages:

-- A smaller percentage of teachers at high poverty elementary and secondary schools have earned at least a master's degree and a regular professional certification than those in low poverty schools.

-- They are less likely to graduate from high school; on average, 68 percent of 12th grade students in high poverty-schools graduated with a diploma in 2007-2008, compared to 91 percent at low poverty schools. The numbers have actually gotten worse for students at high poverty schools, dropping from 86 to 68 percent since 1999-2000.

-- After graduating from a high poverty school, 28 percent enrolled in a four-year institution, compared to 52 percent of graduates from low poverty schools. And while college enrollment has increased by 8 percent since 1999-2000 for graduates from higher income schools, the numbers have remained stable for those in poor schools.

"It's a persistent challenge," said Val Plisko, associate commissioner for early childhood, international and crosscutting studies at the National Center for Education Statistics, which produced the report.

Daria Hall, director of K-12 policy development at the Education Trust, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said students at high poverty schools tend to start out behind their counterparts at low poverty schools and get less support at school.

"We take those students who have less outside of school, and we give them less of everything we know contributes to achievement inside of school, too," Hall said.

Cities were more likely to have a larger percentage of high poverty schools. About 40 percent of city elementary schools fell into that category in 2007-2008, compared to 15 percent in towns and 13 percent in suburbs, according to the study. The report found a similar trend at the secondary school level.

The South and West had a higher percentage of public elementary schools that were high poverty than the Northeast and Midwest, 24 percent compared to 16 and 12 percent, respectively. Mississippi had the highest percentage nationwide -- 52 percent of its public elementary schools are considered high poverty. Louisiana, New Mexico, the District of Columbia and California were also pointed out as having higher percentages of low income elementary schools.

Students at high poverty schools are more likely to be minorities.

Hispanic students, for example, made up 46 percent of students at high poverty elementary schools and 11 percent of students at low poverty schools in the 2007-2008 school year. White students, by comparison, made up 14 percent of students at high poverty elementary schools, and 75 percent at low poverty elementary schools.

High poverty schools also have a larger percentage of students with limited English proficiency.

Students at these schools had lower average scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and math than those at low poverty schools, though their scores have steadily increased in both subjects, and in some areas, such as 4th-grade reading, the achievement gap has decreased.

The Condition of Education report also included a number of other academic indicators, including overall figures on enrollment, high school graduation rates, and college attainment.

Enrollment among children 3 to 4 has increased from 20 to 53 percent between 1970 and 2008. Plisko said the increase, which leveled off at about 2000, could be attributed to an increase in the number of women entering the labor force during those decades, and the start of research suggesting early education for disadvantaged students.

The percentage of 16 to 24-year-old students not enrolled in school, and who do not have a high school diploma or equivalent degree, has dropped from 14 to 8 percent between 1980 and 2008. The total number of college post-secondary degrees earned has also risen markedly, from 2.3 to 3.1 million from 1997-1998 and 2007-2008.

"We're holding our own given the difficult times we live in," Plisko said.

CHRISTINE ARMARIO, Associated Press

Peoria has officially entered backwater status

This person who posted in the pjstar hit the nail on the head:

Busy Bee
1 day ago

If the state of architecture in a community is a benchmark of the condition of its culture, then Peoria has officially entered backwater status. EM Properties should be ashamed to present this to a downtown that needs all the help it can get help that is exponentially improved with the proven use of great design. The most shocking part is that EM Properties thought it was appropriate to entrust the design to an in-house corporate architect from Marriott for such a high profile project that is so important to downtown. Is it any surprise then that this edifice resembles a corporate highway motel of the most common kind? Even its fundamental urban elements are flimsy, dubious and irrationally executed. This design is tragically myopic. What a sad state of affairs.

EM Properties please, for the benefit of everyone, return to the drawing board. If your taste is lacking, hire someone who has it and knows what it looks like. May I suggest someone who understands how to use glass, modern materials and modern form that will complement the Pere through contrast, not pander to it especially in such a particularly unflattering and unconvincing manner. Peoria deserves better. You can do better. There's still time. Please don't let yourself be remembered for a handful of throwaway chain restaurants and a dreadfully ugly and offensively passe hotel mid-rise and parking garage where there should be a structure Peoria can be proud of and thankful to you for building.