Educators remove over 3.45 million students from school annually for disciplinary reasons, despite strong evidence that school suspension policies are harmful to students. The research presented in this volume demonstrates that disciplinary policies and practices that schools control directly exacerbate today's profound inequities in educational opportunity and outcomes. Part I explores how suspensions flow along the lines of race, gender, and disability status. Part II examines potential remedies that show great promise, including a district-wide approach in Cleveland, Ohio, aimed at social and emotional learning strategies. Closing the School Discipline Gap is a call for action that focuses on an area in which public schools can and should make powerful improvements, in a relatively short period of time. Contributors include Robert Balfanz, Jamilia Blake, Dewey Cornell, Jeremy D. Finn, Thalia González, Anne Gregory, Daniel J. Losen, David M. Osher, Russell J. Skiba, Ivory A. Toldson “Closing the School Discipline Gap can make an enormous difference in reducing disciplinary exclusions across the country. This book not only exposes unsound practices and their disparate impact on the historically disadvantaged, but provides educators, policymakers, and community advocates with an array of remedies that are proven effective or hold great promise. Educators, communities, and students alike can benefit from the promising interventions and well-grounded recommendations.” —Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University “For over four decades school discipline policies and practices in too many places have pushed children out of school, especially children of color. Closing the School Discipline Gap shows that adults have the power—and responsibility—to change school climates to better meet the needs of children. This volume is a call to action for policymakers, educators, parents, and students.” —Marian Wright Edelman, president, Children’s Defense Fund

"This book examines the most frightening and challenging form of juvenile violence, the K-12 school violence perpetrator, as separate from all other forms of school and public offenders. It separates school violence perpetrators into a more concise types such as: traditional school violence perpetrators, gang-related school violence perpetrators, and non-school associated mentally ill school violence perpetrators"--

Exposing the deeply harmful impact of street-style policing on urban high school students

Despite well-publicized reports of decreased incidents of violence, the United States remains a leader in rates of homicide, handgun ownership, and school violence. Based on research conducted in high schools and a prison, At Zero Tolerance examines how the United States has responded to violence in its schools and in its streets. In addition to its critique of «get tough» policies initiated in the 1990s, this book offers a means of violence prevention that addresses issues of school restructuring, handgun policy, vocational education, and popular culture. At Zero Tolerance examines violence and violence prevention from the perspectives of policy, institutional reform, and the individuals most affected by the crisis, namely, youths caught in cycles of victimization and victimizing.

This book offers a research and comparison-driven look at the school-to-prison pipeline, its racial dynamics, the connections to mass incarceration, and our flawed educational climate—and suggests practical remedies for change. How is racism perpetuated by the education system, particularly via the "school-to-prison pipeline?" How is the school to prison pipeline intrinsically connected to the larger context of the prison industrial complex as well as the extensive and ongoing criminalization of youth of color? This book uniquely describes the system of policies and practices that racialize criminalization by routing youth of color out of school and towards prison via the school-to-prison pipeline while simultaneously medicalizing white youth for comparable behaviors. This work is the first to consider and link all of the research and data from a sociological perspective, using this information to locate racism in our educational systems; describe the rise of the so-called prison industrial complex; spotlight the concomitant expansion of the "medical-industrial complex" as an alternative for controlling the white and well-off, both adult and juveniles; and explore the significance of media in furthering the white racial frame that typically views people of color as "criminals" as an automatic response. The author also examines the racial dynamics of the school to prison pipeline as documented by rates of suspension, expulsion, and referrals to legal systems and sheds light on the comparative dynamics of the related educational social control of white and middle-class youth in the larger context of society as a whole.

Mandatory punishments for disciplinary offenses have been included in school districts Student Codes of Conduct since it was mandated by the GunFree Schools Act of 1994. While zero tolerance policies were initially created to protect students and teachers from gun attacks in schools, the way in which these policies have actually been implemented in schools has prompted some parents, educators, and politicians to challenge them and call for zero tolerance policy reform. Since 1994, a majority of school districts have expanded their use of zero tolerance policies to include infractions other than those included to keep guns out of schools. Zero Tolerance Discipline Policies, the first comprehensive study of its kind, conducted by author Dr. Brian James Schoonover, examines the history of zero tolerance policies, including the practice of adding offenses other than the possession of guns to these policies. With practical, actionoriented recommendations on ways policymakers and educational leaders can improve how students are disciplined, Zero Tolerance Discipline Policies offers recommendations on what should be included in a model Student Code of Conduct as well as a recommendation for starting a ThreeCHANCE (Changing Habits After New Character Education) system of educational placements to ensure all students are educated in a safe and appropriate facility.

Absurdity, social realism, and the indepth examination of the human condition are but a few of the themes that comprise the contents of the seventythree short stories breathing menacingly between the covers of this book. Humor attacks surrealism on a landscape sun-saturated with saintly thought and intense clarity creations first simple act of pure effervescence getting drowned.