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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:41 pm
Time: 10:41 pm
Results for zero tolerance policies (schools)
1 results foundAuthor: Advancement Project Title: Test, Punish, and Push Out: How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth Into the School-To-Prison Pipeline Summary: Our tragically low national high school graduation rates should shock the conscience of every American. Reform is clearly needed, but it should start with the policies and practices that have resulted in millions of children not receiving a full and equal chance to receive a high quality education. While there are many factors that contribute to this sad reality, this report explores the two policies that may pose the most direct threat to the educational opportunities of America’s youth: “zero tolerance” school discipline and high-stakes testing. While they are usually considered separately, these two policies are actually closely related. In fact, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing both share the same ideological roots, and together they have combined to seriously damage the relationships between schools and the communities they serve throughout the country. Rather than helping to provide all students with enriching learning experiences, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing lead to an impoverished education for many young people. Instead of supporting students who are struggling or in need, both needlessly punish young people and limit their opportunities to fulfill their potential and achieve their goals. Together, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have turned schools into hostile and alienating environments for many of our youth, effectively treating them as dropouts-in-waiting. The devastating end result of these intertwined punitive policies is a “school-to-prison pipeline,” in which huge numbers of students throughout the country are treated as if they are disposable, and are being routinely pushed out of school and toward the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The first section of the report examines the common origins and ideological roots of zero tolerance and high-stakes testing. In the 1980s, a movement began to implement far more punitive policies in both the criminal justice and public education systems. Modern zero tolerance (throughout this report, “zero tolerance” is used as shorthand for all punitive school discipline policies and practices) and high-stakes testing policies are the direct result of that movement. Within criminal justice policy, it was zero tolerance-style policing strategies implemented starting with the “War on Drugs” that led to the massive expansion of the adult prison population. This “get-tough” approach was eventually exported to schools, leading to a huge increase in the police and security presence in schools and far more harsh responses to student behavior. The results have been devastating, as across the country there have been dramatic increases in the use of lengthy out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, referrals to alternative schools, referrals to law enforcement, and school-based arrests. In effect, these policies and practices have blurred the line between the education and criminal justice systems. In public education, the equivalent to the War on Drugs was the crackdown on so-called “failing schools” following the 1983 publication of “A Nation at Risk.” That led to a push for greater school accountability, which came to mean broader use of standardized tests to measure achievement. As with zero tolerance, over time policymakers began using these tests punitively, in this case against both students and educators. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was both a product of this movement and a catalyst for its growth, as it has ushered in a new wave of inflexible, test-based accountability. Since the passage of NCLB in 2002, both the use of highstakes tests and the severity of the consequences attached to them have risen dramatically, leading to a rapidly dwindling set of opportunities for students who do not score well on these exams. Moreover, this “test and punish” approach has had a devastating effect on the quality of education being offered at many schools. Because of the severe consequences attached to these tests, many schools have been turned into test-prep factories, with narrowed, distorted, and weakened curricula often dominated by mindless drilling, rote memorization exercises, and “teaching to the test.” This has suffocated high-quality instruction, and made it more difficult than ever for teachers to engage students and create authentic and sustained learning. Thus, this “get-tough” approach to accountability has created an education system that increasingly turns students off to learning and teachers off to teaching. Despite substantial evidence of the damage caused by zero tolerance and high-stakes testing and the overwhelming body of research supporting alternative approaches, these policies have spread like wildfire due to their easy political appeal. The promoters and defenders of these policies have used the same, undeniably persuasive arguments grounded in principles of accountability and personal responsibility that many Americans associate with success in other fields, such as business. Indeed, the driving ideology behind both high-stakes testing and zero tolerance comes right out of the corporate playbook, as it is based on the notion that problems are solved and productivity is improved through rigorous competition, uncompromising discipline, constant assessment, performance-inducing incentives, and the elimination of low performers. While these principles may work in the business world, they are simply a bad fit in the context of public education. They are based on faulty assumptions, fail to create real improvement in schools, ensure that large numbers of students will fail academically, and fall far short of the democratic purposes of our public education system. Nevertheless, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have followed the same path on their way to being frequently – and inappropriately – substituted for meaningful education reform. The second section of the report examines the current state of zero-tolerance school discipline across the country, and includes local, state, and national data. School districts around the country have adopted extraordinarily severe discipline policies and practices in recent years. These punitive measures extend far beyond serious infractions; instead, the vast majority of punitive disciplinary consequences tend to result from relatively minor misbehavior or trivial student actions. In fact, the problem in most cases is not the student, but, rather, the adults who react inappropriately to youthful behavior. Details: Los Angeles: Advancement Project, 2010. 56p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 5, 2011 at: http://www.advancementproject.org/sites/default/files/publications/rev_fin.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.advancementproject.org/sites/default/files/publications/rev_fin.pdf Shelf Number: 118080 Keywords: Delinquency PreventionEducationSchool DisciplineSchool DropoutsZero Tolerance Policies (Schools) |