For black kids, the school-to-prison pipeline opens the second they start preschool

[MrScorpio]

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Black students are disproportionately suspended from school when they’re as young as three-years-old, according to new data released by the Department of Education this week, suggesting that the school-to-prison pipeline is set in motion even earlier than elementary school.

Despite fewer black children being enrolled in preschool, they’re 3.6 times more likely to be suspended from school as white children, the report found: http://fusion.net/story/310792/black-students-school-suspension/

[Silver_Witch]

1. When will it end!

Children treated as criminals at three. They are children for the love of unicorns. We have to stop this!

[MrScorpio]

3. If you're black in America, it never will end.

From childhood to teens:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/118753469

And from teens to adulthood:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027889958

[Silver_Witch]

4. We have to change it!

We have to find a way! No mother should loose a child to police or prison!

[Bucky]

11. Amen. We have to change it.

[tonyt53]

2. Been keeping up with these stories and it is sickening. This trend follows through high school too

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. Yep

[Gothmog]

6. Great article

One of my friends ran for a local school board on the platform of trying to eliminate or reduce the disparity in treatment of African American students and white students. She actually won and is working to change the system

[Captain Stern]

7. The article has some messed up numbers in it.

The first chart shows that black students make up 19% of preschool students.

Then the article says:

"And that disparity is actually slightly worse for black girls than boys. While black boys make up 19% of preschool children, they account for 45% of boys suspended; 20% of preschoolers are black girls, but they account for 54% of girls suspended."

That's not even close to being consistent with the chart. If black boys make up 19% of preschool children, and black girls make up 20% of preschool children, then black students make up 39% of preschool children....not 19%.

The paragraph is also doing some bad comparisons. They are comparing the percentages of black boys in the total preschool population with only the percentage of preschool boys suspended. They are doing the same thing with the girls.

This doesn't mean what they are trying to illustrate isn't true, but that part of the article is sloppy and confusing.

[Igel]

8. It has a goal.

It reaches that goal.

It fails to account for the numbers adequately. It makes no assertion as to cause, but since it's presenting race as relevant we're led to assume that race accounts for 100% of the variance. That's almost certainly wrong, but since we arrive at the conclusion ourselves it's above suspicion.

The study itself, from what I've seen, leaves out controls and doesn't really address differences that might account for the outcome. Again, it leaves us with race as the sole factor.

My school has a 0% tolerance. You fight, you're in out-of-school suspension for a least one day. Doesn't matter why. First offense or 20th, no difference. I had a Latino girl in class a few years ago who intervened to keep a kid from being seriously hurt after she was knocked down and being kicked; my student was in the fight to help break it up, but when she got out of the hospital and her back injury was to the point she could use a cane, she was in OSS. Zero means zero.

The school was about 50% white last year. Perhaps 20% of the OSS kids were white. A plurality was black, with maybe 15% of the student population; in #2 position were Latinos, at 35% or so. There's something going on besides just racism. All of the kids were low income. Some were new to the district, some weren't. But there's more to it than just race.

[Fumesucker]

9. It's a good thing the presumptive nominee has a lot of influence with the private prison industry

It inspires confidence in me that she can bring the private prisons properly to heel.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Yup it does.

Less for Latino kids.

Je statistics should be an embarrassment.

[Odin2005]

12. There was a story of a black kid who got arrested for theft for taking food he had already paid for.