Race in school discipline: Study looks at silence among educators (quotes Prudence Carter)

Minority students, particularly boys, tend to face far harsher punishments, even at young ages, for the same infractions that non-minority students commit. A new study examines educators' reluctance to talk about the ways they might view students differently.

As protests and anger continue to percolate around the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and other unarmed black men, one group is calling attention to the fact that many of the racial stereotypes that may have contributed to these events begin at much younger ages.

Civil rights groups in recent years have been highlighting the often extreme racial disparities in school discipline: Minority students, particularly boys, tend to face far harsher punishments, even at young ages, for the same infractions that non-minority students commit. And punishments like suspension, in particular – which keep children out of school – can have big repercussions down the road as they influence graduation rates and school achievement. It’s a problem some have termed the “school-to-prison pipeline,” and that President Obama highlighted earlier this year when he unveiled the "My Brother's Keeper" program to reform school-discipline policies.

On Wednesday, the Discipline Disparities Research-to-Practice Collaborative, which earlier this year published an analysis of research on discipline disparities, released a new paper focused on the reluctance of educators to talk about or acknowledge the ways they might view students differently by race, and calling on schools to be more direct in the ways they confront racial issues, and to do something with the data they collect.

"There’s this adultification that’s linked to criminalization. [Educators] don’t give black and brown boys that same kind of benefit of doubt, where they're allowed to be naughty or mischievous," says Prudence Carter, a sociologist and one of the authors of the latest report.

Read the full story in the Christian Science Monitor.

Prudence Carter is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and Faculty Director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities.