What do zero-tolerance policies, “no excuses” practices, and grade retention have in common?
They all negatively and disproportionately impact children from poverty, minority children, English language learners, and boys; and nearly as disturbing, all are discredited by large bodies of research.
Is the tide turning against at least zero-tolerance policies? Lizette Alvarez reports:
Faced with mounting evidence that get-tough policies in schools are leading to arrest records, low academic achievement and high dropout rates that especially affect minority students, cities and school districts around the country are rethinking their approach to minor offenses.
Zero-tolerance policies, “no excuses” practices, and grade retention have something else in common: they should all be eradicated from our schools. And thus, here is a reader to help support calls for ending these practices and policies:
Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School, Kathleen Nolan
Review: Police in the Hallways: Confronting the “Culture of Control,” P. L. Thomas
The School-to-Prison Pipeline, Journal of Educational Controversy (vol. 7, issue 1, Fall/2012-Winter 2013)
Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America’s Children, Sarah Carr
New Schools, Old Problems [Review: Hope Against Hope], P. L. Thomas
Education Reform in the New Jim Crow Era
Truthout TV Interviews P.L. Thomas About the New “Jim Crow” Era of Education Reform
Just Say No to Just Read, Florida, South Carolina [includes retention research]
Implementing Policies to Reduce the Likelihood of Preschool Expulsion, Walter S. Gilliam, PhD
Prekindergarteners Left Behind: Expulsion Rates in State Prekindergarten Programs, Walter S. Gilliam, PhD
Henry Giroux on the “School to Prison Pipeline”
The Mis-education of the Negro, Carter Godwin Woodson
Arresting Development • Zero Tolerance and the Criminalization of Children, Annette Fuentes
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 
Having worked in numerous schools where administrators expect teachers to approach kids in a manner with ‘kick ass, take names and ask questions later’, this type of environment socializes kids to do the same to each other and eventually toward adults. When they approach adults in this fashion, they are kicked out or taken to discipline tribunals.
We are training generations of children to interact in this way. Then, we are actually surprised that this is coming back at us and to society? Come on! Behind their tough facade , many of our students have all the characteristics of human beings who want the same we want for our own kids. No, I am not a Pollyanna. 40 years in Education, at all levels has given me much to observe, learn from and think about.
We are socializing our American students in such a way that we get exactly what we now have. Suddenly, we don’t want that because we don’t feel safe and our kids have turned off to learning. Surprise?
We have to do things very differently, and Now!
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Here’s one that was reblogged on Sociology Lens on TheSocietyPages.org: http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2013/11/07/want-to-help-marginalized-students-improve-in-schools-stop-stop-and-frisk-and-other-punitive-practices-too/
“Want to Help Marginalized Students Improve in Schools? Stop Stop-and-Frisk and Other Punitive Practices, Too.”