Podcast: Racial Disproportionality in Disciplinary Practices

A big topic in educational policy and practice right now is disparate disciplinary practices. Essentially, black students, especially males, and students with disabilities are subject to disproportionally high rates of exclusionary discipline practices (suspensions and expulsions) and what they are being disciplined for is often subjective behaviors, such as disrespect, versus objective behaviors, such as smoking cigarettes on school grounds. This is an especially big topic in the state of Virginia and in the region of Virginia--central Virginia--where I live and study. See this recent article about it in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

A congressman has called for a federal investigation of disparities in student treatment within the Richmond region’s schools.

U.S. Rep. A. Donald McEachin, D-4th, requested an investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on Monday, the same day that a Richmond Times-Dispatch article detailed higher suspension rates and over-identification of African-American students with disabilities.

The Virginia Department of Education cited Henrico and Chesterfield counties for suspending black students with disabilities at a disproportionately high rate over several years. The department cited Richmond because the city’s African-American students with disabilities have been more likely to be identified as having an “other health impairment” than other students with disabilities.

Chesterfield, Henrico and Richmond are among seven Virginia school districts mandated to set aside federal money received under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act this year to combat the pattern.

This problem is not new at all, for example, see this article from 2012. And, there's lots more where that came from.

How do I know so much about this? How is it that I have read almost every single report, news and journal article about this? Well, I am part of a MERC research team studying the issue in the Richmond, Virginia, area. The Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) comprises "a partnership between seven Richmond-area school divisions and the VCU School of Education" that "plans, conducts, and disseminates community-engaged action and applied research."

A few months ago, I took part with other team members in a MERC podcast about the study. If you want to learn more, I encourage you to take a listen.

Long time, no blog

Hello readers!

I had thought that a doctoral program in Educational Leadership would mean I would be doing lots of reading, writing, and blogging about education. But it didn't exactly turn out that way. The reading and writing part held true. I kept up with all of my education reading and it served me well in my studies. In fact, after long days of reading academic journal articles, reading education news and blogs was a way I unwound and relaxed. And, of course, I wrote: notes, questions, and thoughts about what I was reading and then papers and projects and exams.

But the blogging, well, not so much. And then all of a sudden it is the end of the semester and I haven't posted anything in over three months. Nothing. Not even one post. Not even a draft. And I went days and weeks without tweeting.

My negligence of this blog was in part due to lack of time; between my classes, my graduate assistantship, my family, and a few humbling hard balls that life threw at us, I didn't have much free time to blog to or to keep up with the reparte that goes with blogging and tweeting. Sometimes even if I had the time, I didn't have the mental energy.

The desire also wasn't totally there. This doctoral program was in part to be an exercise in learning and studying education in a way I hadn't before--from an academic standpoint. As such, my perspective has become even more circumspect and cautious. There is just so much complexity to how people learn, how people in K-12 settings behave, why educators and decision-makers make the choices they do, and in how policy works. Although some guiding principals and values remain as influential as ever on me, I am more reluctant than ever to make what could be unsubstantiated claims or take strong stances.

I also realized early on this semester that the classroom is not like my blog. I am not the only one in the room. I don't get to remain in the bubble of my own experiences, thoughts, and writing. This is a time to share but also to listen and absorb. My classmates and my professors have experiences and thoughts, too. And while we benefit from learning from one another, we also learn how we are informed differently and in some cases misinformed or uninformed.

On the other hand, in grad school sometimes I have found myself having to come up with something to say in order to contribute, whereas here when I have something to say, I say it and then I hope I might be contributing. I hope I have started to lay the groundwork to contribute academically--I've got some ideas :) But in the meantime, while I have breather, I may have few things to say here, outside of the doctoral classroom that I've been saving up. Stay tuned. . .

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Two years ago, I decided to blog much less frequently for various reasons, including a desire to listen and reflect more, get back on the real (as opposed to writers) job market, and engage more in-person in local education matters.

Well, two years later of teaching preschool and of being more active locally (in fact, just before writing this post, I was crafting a letter about the problem of teacher attrition in my school district), I am going to retain my practice of better listening and reflection and of local activism, but I will be edu-blogging more frequently (so get ready!). And, here's the big news:  I am (sadly) leaving my preschool teaching position to (happily) start a full-time PhD program (the hints of this are here in the start of this unrealized series about taking the GREs) in Educational Leadership: Research & Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. I will take a full load of courses and will be working for a professor in the School of Education for twenty hours per week.

People have asked me, what do you hope to do with that? And my answer is simple: I hope to take full advantage of this opportunity to be sponsored to study, read, and write about topics about which I am immensely interested, education research and policy. When I got my masters degree, it was mostly in conjunction with teacher licensure, to become a teacher. With this PhD, I hope to become more knowledgeable and to contribute knowledge to the field. If I get a PhD-level job I like when I finish, great. But I would gladly return to teaching in the public K-12 classroom, too.

To all of my readers: thanks for sticking with this blog for almost four years thus far, thanks for your support and for your push-back, and wish me luck.