Parents, teachers sick of school chaos look to Betsy DeVos to erase Obama discipline rule
Another Obama failure finally comes out
What the Obama-era discipline guidance has taught Nicole Landers is that your kids can be bullied, roughed up, even sexually assaulted, and the school won’t do a whole heck of a lot about it.
The Maryland mother said two of her sons have been picked on and threatened, while her 11-year-old daughter was repeatedly groped over the course of several months by a classmate. Even so, Ms. Landers said the boy was never suspended.
“Eventually I went in and met with the principal, and she told me that the other student has rights,” said Ms. Landers.
“I told her she was conditioning my daughter to [accept] sexual aggression. I don’t understand how you can look at my daughter and tell me that she should tolerate her body parts being touched by this other student. No one should be asked to be put in that learning environment.”
She and her daughter, a Baltimore County Public Schools student, plan to share their experience at
Wednesday’s school safety commission roundtable in Washington with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who’s considering rescinding the Obama administration’s 2014 Dear Colleague letter urging schools to lighten up on discipline.
The Office for Civil Rights directive has come under attack following the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, for helping create what critics describe as a permissive climate that allowed the shooter to remain in school despite multiple infractions.
While the guidance has been credited with lowering suspensions, expulsions and arrests at a number of K-12 districts, it’s also been blamed for schools that are more chaotic and dangerous as officials seek to curb discipline rates in order to avoid triggering a federal investigation.
Ann Miller, a member of the Baltimore County board of education, said Ms. Landers isn’t the only one concerned.
“She’s not an outlier at all. I’ve heard many, many cases. I have teachers and parents calling me on the phone regularly, crying,” said Ms. Miller. “I would say every couple of weeks there’s a student video of violent attacks in BCPS that’s posted on social media, or a news report. We see this regularly.”
DeVos, in her role as chair of the Trump administration’s newly formed Commission on School Safety, will also hear Wednesday from teachers and education advocates who argue that the federal guidance is needed to prevent minority and disabled students from winding up in the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
Evan Stone, co-CEO and co-founder of Educators for Excellence, said black students are suspended at three times the rates of white students, while those with disabilities, a category that includes conditions like ADHD, are twice as likely to be suspended or expelled.
The department “must continue to highlight the disparities that exist in school discipline, investigate districts where those disparities may be caused by bias, and support the implementation of strategies to reduce punitive discipline,” he said in a statement.
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