Education Week - April 11, 2018 - 22

COMMENTARY

School Safety Shouldn't
Come at the Cost of Justice

By Vanita Gupta & Catherine E. Lhamon
ollowing the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School mass shooting, courageous and inspiring students around the country are demanding
action, refusing to believe that we can do nothing to stem America's gun violence epidemic.
In stark contrast, U.S. Secretary of Education
Betsy DeVos has responded with plans to chair a
new task force on school safety that will, among
other things, consider the wholly nonresponsive goal of repealing Obama-era discipline guidance.
The departments of Justice and Education, whose civil rights
units we had the privilege to lead during the Obama administration, crafted the 2014 guidance documents that are now
under attack. Intended to help schools serve students more
effectively, the guidance explains long-standing federal law
prohibiting racial discrimination in school discipline and concretely outlines how schools can satisfy this law while maintaining classroom peace. The guidance makes clear to school
administrators and communities what the law is and how to
apply it to treat all students fairly. In addition, the guidance
provides practical resources to reduce disparities in exclusionary discipline and improve school climate, including a 50-state
compendium of laws related to school discipline. A best prac-

Many American
schools have a problem:
separate and unequal
discipline practices."

tices document highlights alternatives to out-of-school disciplinary techniques that work to maintain classroom peace. The
goal was simply to ensure that all children have a chance to
learn and thrive.
The reality is, many American schools have a problem: separate and unequal discipline practices that discriminate on the
basis of race. We know from careful investigations we oversaw
at the departments of Justice and Education that children of
color and those with disabilities often receive harsher disciplinary interventions than their white and nondisabled counterparts-for the same offenses. In one investigation, school staff
could not identify nondiscriminatory reasons for racially different disciplinary treatment of students in more than a quarter
of the files investigated.
In another investigation, a black kindergartner received a
five-day out-of-school suspension for pulling a fire alarm when
a 9th grade white student received a one-day out-of-school suspension for the same offense. In still another example, a black
student with no prior disciplinary history received a one-day
out-of-school suspension for smoking tobacco whereas a white
student who had been disciplined for smoking twice before received only detention for the third smoking offense. In essence,
these children of color pay a discipline tariff based simply on
their identity. This is illegal. And wrong.
And data that schools have reported to the federal Civil

The Gentrification of Creativity
By Anthony Brandt
& David Eagleman

Getty

W
22 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 11, 2018 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

hen a team of
leading economists led by
Stanford's Raj
Chetty recently
linked the patent records of
more than a
million inventors with their tax records, they
made a startling discovery: The best predictor of whether you're going to become an inventor is your tax bracket. If your parents
were in the top 1 percent of income in the
United States, you're 10 times more likely
to file a patent than someone who comes
from an economically disadvantaged background. In a recent paper explaining these
findings, the Equality of Opportunity Project
described generations of "lost Einsteins." As
the gap widens between the haves and havenots, the ranks of inventors are tapering to
an ever more elite minority.
The study also confirmed what teachers
have often reported: The remedies most often
used to address these inequities-regimented
curricula and standardized testing-may actually be making them worse. The more that
"teaching to the test" dominates the school
day, the more creative learning gets sidelined.
Instead, the key element that makes a difference is exposure to innovation. We need to
invest in children's imaginations.
But how? Classrooms are often over-

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Education Week - April 11, 2018

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