Colorblind Policy in a Carceral Geography: Reclaiming Public Education
| Author | Margaret Schmits-Earley,Traci Schlesinger |
| Date | 01 April 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225420931188 |
| Published date | 01 April 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
931188YJJ0010.1177/1473225420931188Youth JusticeSchlesinger and Schmits-Earley
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Youth Justice
2021, Vol. 21(1) 33 –54
Colorblind Policy in a Carceral
© The Author(s) 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225420931188
DOI: 10.1177/1473225420931188
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Education
Traci Schlesinger and Margaret Schmits-Earley
Abstract
During the last decade, the federal government, states, and school districts implemented changes in school
discipline policy to shift schools’ reliance from punishment and exclusion toward prevention, intervention,
and restoration. In order to assess the impact of the last decade of reforms on attempts to decrease
punishment and increase equity in schools, we examine nine large metropolitan districts that both revised
their Codes of Conduct to limit their reliance on exclusionary discipline and implemented schoolwide
behavioral and/or restorative programs. We find that while reforms are associated with decreases in
students’ experience of three of four exclusionary discipline outcomes from 2009 to 2015, these benefits
tend to accrue to the least vulnerable students – White students without disabilities. One explanation of
this finding is that colorblind, risk-based, carceral assumptions of school and state policies undercut efforts
to increase equity in school discipline.
Keywords
colorblind racism, exclusionary discipline, positive behavior intervention and supports, race-neutral policy,
restorative justice, risk factor prevention paradigm, school criminalization, zero-tolerance
Introduction
After remaining relatively stable for nearly a century, the United States’ carceral systems
mushroomed during the last quarter of the 20th century (Garland, 2001; Western, 2007).
Youth criminalization was crucial to this escalation. Through partnerships with the juvenile
legal system and the growing acceptance of both the neoliberal ideology of the manage-
ment of at-risk and risky individuals and the neo-conservative ideology of just deserts,
public schools became ever more punitive through the 1980s and 1990s (Beck, 1992;
Kang-Brown, 2014; Shollenberger, 2015). Consistent with neoliberal mentalities, district,
state, and federal education policy and practice shifted, increasingly adopting crime control
paradigms that viewed students as problems and risks to be managed, and cost–benefit
Corresponding author:
Traci Schlesinger, Department of Sociology, DePaul University, Suite 1200, 990 W Fullerton, Chicago, IL 60614, USA.
Email: traci.schlesinger@depaul.edu
34
Youth Justice 21(1)
analysis, risk management programs, and situational crime-preventive schemes as the best
solutions (Clarke, 1983, 2008; Madfis, 2016; O’Malley, 1998; Rose, 2000). The result was
school criminalization: a punitive shift in the ways policymakers and school actors think
and communicate about the goals of education, including the day-to-day practice of educa-
tors and staff, mandatory discipline policies, punishing school architecture, law enforce-
ment inside of schools, camera surveillance, metal detectors, searches, lockdowns, and
referrals to law enforcement. These shifts lead students toward contact with youth crimi-
nalizing systems and lock-ups and reflect the environments of prisons onto educational
systems (Hirschfield, 2008; Meiners Erica, 2010; Wacquant, 2001). One materialization of
school criminalization was a spike in the use of exclusionary discipline – punitive responses
that remove kids from classrooms. The number of students suspended at least once
increased 69 per cent between 1973 and 2011 (Kang-Brown, 2014). During the height of
exclusionary discipline use in the 1990s, one in three students and nearly one-half of Black
students were suspended at some point (Shollenberger, 2015).
Then, influential segments of the public, policymakers, and politicians realized that
mass youth incarceration was not achieving its stated goals, instead often making com-
munities less stable, less safe, and more unequal (Davis, 2003; Western, 2007). Community
activism, overwhelming evidence that exclusionary discipline was being used in disparate
ways and has long-term deleterious impacts on kids throughout their life-courses, and
three Obama-administration initiatives provided the backbone of a broad-based backlash
against the punitive zeal of the 1980s and 1990s (González, 2012; Shollenberger, 2015;
US Department of Education and Civil Rights Division, 2014). Community organizations –
including Padres & Jóvenes Unidos in Denver, Power U in Miami, VOYCE in Chicago,
and others across the United States – organized locally for revised Codes of Conduct that
limit exclusionary discipline and for the introduction of restorative responses, which seek
the transformation of people who have engaged in harmful behavior through reconcilia-
tion with those whom they have harmed (APA Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008; González,
2012). Simultaneously, scholars published studies documenting the long-term injurious
consequences of exclusionary discipline, particularly on academic and carceral outcomes.
These studies find that, students who experience exclusionary discipline have decreased
academic achievement, are less likely to complete high school, less likely to enroll in col-
lege, and less likely to complete college compared to academically and behaviorally simi-
lar students (Cholewa et al., 2017; Fabelo et al., 2011; Marchbanks et al., 2015; Morris
and Perry, 2016; Rumberger and Losen, 2016). Likewise, students who experience exclu-
sionary discipline are more likely than otherwise comparable students to be arrested in the
following year and on probation or in prison at some point as an adult (Mowen and Brent,
2016; Rosenbaum, 2018; Shollenberger, 2015).
Federal policy initiatives also led to policy changes in local districts. First, the
Departments of Education and Justice launched the Supportive School Discipline Initiative
in 2011 to help schools move away from exclusionary discipline. In 2014, the Departments
of Education and Justice released a Dear Colleague letter, warning that schools unlaw-
fully discriminate if their school discipline policies and practices result in disparate impact
even if those policies and practices are facially race neutral; this letter was coupled with
the ‘Rethink School Discipline’ Guidance (US Department of Education and Civil Rights
Schlesinger and Schmits-Earley
35
Division, 2014). The Dear Colleague letter was notable for challenging the Courts’ color-
blind interpretation of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, which – while sometimes contested
through dissents – was consolidated through a series of decisions in the mid-1970s
(Freeman, 1978; Gotanda, 1991). Finally, in 2015, Congress reauthorized the Every
Student Succeeds Act, which seeks to curtail the overuse of exclusionary discipline. As of
the 2015–2016 schoolyear, 23 of the 100 largest school districts nationwide had imple-
mented policy reforms limiting exclusionary discipline (Steinberg and Lacoe, 2017).
Concurrently, the proportion of all students who experience out of school suspension fell
from 5.6 per cent in 2011–2012 to 4.7 per cent in 2015–2016 (Kamenetz, 2018).
Research design
In order to understand how changes in school policy and practice are associated with
levels of and equity in exclusionary discipline, we undertake a five-step evaluation. First,
in a section entitled ‘No new tools’, we examine two districts that limited exclusionary
discipline without successfully implementing whole-school preventive or restorative
programs in order to see if limits alone can lead to decreases in schools’ use of exclusion-
ary discipline. Second, in a section headed ‘Changing school climate’, we evaluate two
programs that studies find increase academic achievement and student engagement,
decrease student–teacher conflict and student disruption, and decrease teachers’ use of
exclusionary discipline: Whole School Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports
(WSPBIS) and Whole School Restorative Justice (WSRJ) (Anyon et al., 2016; Bradshaw
et al., 2012; Karp and Breslin, 2001; McIntosh et al., 2018). Third, in a section headed
‘Culturally responsive?’, we examine whether and to what extent districts’ implementa-
tion of revised Codes of Conduct plus either WSPBIS and/or WSRJ target the mecha-
nisms that produce racial disparities in youths’ odds of experiencing exclusionary
discipline. Fourth, in our ‘Outcomes’ section, we evaluate changes in rates of and dis-
parities in four discipline outcomes – out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, referrals to
law enforcement, and school-based arrests – in all nine districts as they implement
revised Codes of Conduct and whole-school preventive and restorative practices. We end
with a section headed ‘Ending disparities’ that briefly discusses how districts can create
school policies to promote the achievement of all students, reducing overall levels of and
combatting inequities in exclusion.
Data
We examine the relationship between district characteristics, school discipline policies,
and school discipline outcomes from 2009 to 2015 in nine metropolitan school districts,
each of which altered their school discipline policies in an attempt to move from punitive
responses toward intervention and restoration. These districts are Baltimore City, Chicago,
Denver, Miami-Dade County, and New...
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