Education Week - September 14, 2016 - 13

High-Stakes Teaching
Even the National Student/Parent Mock Election is discouraging
the impersonation element.
"Discretion is the better part of
valor," said Gloria Kirshner, the cofounder and president of the program (of which Clinton has been a
board member since 1987). "We're
never mentioning the candidates by
name this year. We've given teachers a great deal of thoughtful ideas
for kids to think about, rather than
the usual 'he said, she said.' "
Despite the myriad of challenges of
teaching the 2016 election, however,
many teachers also see it as a unique
opportunity.
"I think I'm going to have students who have never cared more
about history class," Gold, the Rhode
Island history teacher, said. "They're
going to want to understand all of
this, and they're going to want to
talk to someone about this."
And the stakes are high, educators say. "You can't go into autopilot
this year," Redford said. "Everything
is so potentially explosive that it
makes you feel unsafe getting near
it, but it's too important. It's our democracy; it's our election. You can't
pretend it's not happening. It's not
going away."
PBS NEWSHOUR: See how
teachers and students in
one Maryland school
navigate discussions on
the presidential election.
www.edweek.org/go/
teaching-election

Federal Officials
Urge Clear Roles
For School Police

quire schools to take such actions. Just 12 states
have special training requirements for school resource ofﬁcers, according to a 2015 report by the
American Institutes for Research. Some states
have worked to amend laws that contribute to
high student-arrest rates for vague and subjective infractions like "disturbing a school."

'Communitywide Effort'
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

450 positions are funded by the grants at a
given time, a small fraction of ofﬁcers in schools
nationwide, Davis said.
But federal officials hope the heightened
requirements will serve as an example to all
schools with on-campus law enforcement,
whether or not they use federal grants to hire
ofﬁcers, he said. The new requirements build
on a condition that the Justice Department introduced in 2014 that police agencies receiving
the federal grants must have clear agreements
with districts that outline their responsibilities
within schools.
Federal ofﬁcials said they are concerned about
violations of students' civil rights by schoolbased ofﬁcers if schools don't clearly deﬁne their
role and review their practices.
While school resource ofﬁcers "can help provide a positive and safe learning environment
and build trust between students and lawenforcement ofﬁcials in some situations, I am
concerned about the potential for violations of
students' civil rights and unnecessary citations
or arrests of students in schools, all of which can
lead to the unnecessary and harmful introduction of children and young adults into a schoolto-prison pipeline," U.S. Secretary of Education
John B. King Jr. wrote in a letter to states and
districts.
"As education leaders, you can empower
schools, educators, and staff with the skills and
capacity to avoid relying on [school resource ofﬁcers] in the ﬁrst place, and also eliminate SROrelated school discipline policies and practices
that may harm young people and needlessly
contribute to their involvement with the juvenile- and criminal-justice systems."

Police Presence Expands
Thirty percent of public schools reported
having at least one resource ofﬁcer in 2013-14,
according to the most recent federal data, and
11 percent reported the presence of at least
one sworn law-enforcement ofﬁcer that is not
designated as a school resource ofﬁcer.
The presence of school-based law enforcement
has grown alongside concerns about student
safety, but some civil rights groups have said
ofﬁcers often threaten students' civil rights by
being involved in routine disciplinary matters
that should be handled by school personnel.
Their presence disproportionately affects students of color, who are more likely to be arrested
or referred to law enforcement, they note.
Black students were more than twice as likely
to be referred to law enforcement or arrested
at school than their white peers in 2013-14, according to the latest data from the Education
Department's ofﬁce for civil rights.
"Communities that do not trust cops in their
neighborhoods do not want to invite them into
their schools with their children," Jonathan
Stith, the national coordinator of the Alliance
for Educational Justice, said in a statement.
Karol Mason, the assistant attorney general
for the office of justice programs at the Justice Department, told reporters in a call that
student-arrest rates are fueled by policies and
practices that "hustle kids out of school and into
the court system for minor infractions."
The guidelines released last week encourage
schools to take a number of steps that federal ofﬁcials say would improve the practices of schoolbased ofﬁcers. (See related box.)
A similar document for local and state policymakers, also released last week, includes examples of state statutes and local policies that re-

One policy held up as an example by federal
officials is an agreement that the Broward
County, Fla., district drafted with law enforcement agencies from 31 municipalities that
employ their school resource ofﬁcers. The document-created with input from judges, public defenders, law enforcement, social service

that position through investigations and complaint resolutions, including a recent agreement
with the Richland County, S.C., sheriff's department, which came under ﬁre last year after one
of its ofﬁcers violently arrested a girl, dragging
her from her desk after she refused to put away
her cellphone in math class. The officer was
ﬁred, but faced no criminal charges.
Some civil rights groups have suggested that
schools shouldn't have police at all, citing research that shows higher student-arrest rates
in schools with on-site ofﬁcers. The Dignity in
Schools Campaign, a coalition of civil rights and
student groups, said in a statement that "the
guidance should go further to promote substantive solutions and alternatives to police presence in schools, such as redirecting funding from

Getty

Teachers had requested a resource
like this, she said. On the day of its
release, about 1,000 copies were
downloaded.
The 2016 presidential campaign
has also put a damper on one of
the civic-minded traditions in U.S.
schools: the mock election. This year,
the exercise could lead to problems,
some educators say, particularly if
students are given the roles of impersonating the candidates and trying to win classmates' votes.
"I would not recommend it this
year, because it encourages caricature and it just opens the door to the
kind of language that doesn't belong
in school," Costello said.
Kelly Wickham Hurst, a former
educator and the founder of the advocacy group Being Black at School,
started a Twitter hashtag, #blockthemock, to discourage educators
from hosting mock elections, particularly for the sake of children of color.
"To impersonate candidates-I
think it would be very, very dangerous and damaging to children," she
said. "It would inﬂame some of the
racial and ethnic tensions that kids
are already hearing on the news."
Some schools are ﬁnding alternate
ways to conduct mock elections. Hiland, the Atlanta teacher who supports Trump, said he will continue
to host his school's mock election
but will conduct it in a panel format, with a student moderator and
two panels of students representing
both Trump and Clinton. He did
that in 2008 and said it resulted in
a greater a focus on the issues, as
opposed to the candidates' personalities.

NEW GUIDELINES FOR POLICING IN SCHOOLS
The U.S. departments of Education and Justice are urging schools
to adopt a number of steps to improve the practices of school-based
police ofﬁcers. Among them:
Seek community input when drafting agreements with lawenforcement agencies that detail ofﬁcers' roles in schools and limit
their involvement in disciplinary issues.
Incorporate local, state, and federal civil rights laws into those
agreements and establish processes for monitoring compliance and
receiving complaints about potential violations.
Set policies for hiring and training school resource ofﬁcers
on issues like appropriate use of restraints, child development, and
the effects of youth involvement with the justice system.
Train teachers and staff to avoid calling on school ofﬁcers
to assist with nonviolent disciplinary issues.
Establish a process for evaluating school resource ofﬁcers.
SOURCE: U.S. departments of Education and Justice

groups, civil rights organizations, and others-
requires educators to try to resolve non-violent
incidents before consulting law enforcement.
"The success of our children is a communitywide
effort...so the way we went about this is through
a very collaborative effort with our entire community," Superintendent Robert Runcie said.
The agreement, part of Broward County's
broader effort to improve school climate, has
helped contribute to a 60 percent decline in student arrest rates, from 1,170 arrests in 2010-11
to 469 arrests in 2014-15, state data show.
Even if school-based ofﬁcers are employed by
an outside law-enforcement agency, schools are
responsible for ensuring that they do not violate
students' civil rights, the Justice and Education
departments said in 2014 civil rights guidance
on school discipline. The agencies have enforced

school police towards more counselors, peace
builders, and positive discipline."
Secretary King stressed in a call with reporters that decisions to hire school resource
officers are local. If police are in schools,
they should operate under carefully crafted
policies, he said. He also said schools should
weigh how to appropriately spend resources so
that students feel both safe and supported. He
noted federal civil rights data showing that
in 2013-14, 1.6 million students attended a
school that had a law-enforcement ofﬁcer but
no school counselor.
Davis of the Justice Department said school
resource ofﬁcers can form positive relationships
with students so that when there's a need for
police to respond to a school, they are familiar
with the unique needs of students.

EDUCATION WEEK | September 14, 2016 | www.edweek.org | 13

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Education Week - September 14, 2016

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