This morning as I was driving, I heard a report on CBS News that the Department of Education had found that black students in preschool were many time more likely to be suspended than white students. CBS then played a comment from someone who lamented that more than 50 years after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, there was still racism in the schools. The report peaked my interest, so I started searching to see the actual report. Here is what I found:
First of all, the number of children suspended from preschool is tiny. There are one million children in public preschool programs across America. Fully ninety four percent are in districts that did not suspend even one child from preschool. The issue of suspensions is limited to only six percent of the districts.
Second, the focus of the report was on children who faced multiple suspensions. They totaled 2500 out of the one million kids who were in preschool. That means that the subject of the report was just one quarter of one percent of the total preschool population.
Third, the report did not address the reasons for the suspensions. We do not know why the districts chose to issue suspensions.
Fourth, the report also did not address the racial makeup of the districts that engaged in suspensions of preschool children. That could seriously change the meaning of the numbers in the report. For example, Detroit is more than 90% African American. If the schools in that city make heavy use of suspensions at the preschool level (something that we cannot tell from the report), the numbers nationwide for blacks would rise. It would not indicate racism, however, just the decision in Detroit by the African American administration that suspension is the way to bring discipline to preschool. On the other hand, if there are districts where 95% of the students are white but half the suspensions in preschool are of blacks, there would be need for further investigation to learn the reasons for the suspensions.
What all this means is that because of the small numbers involved, it is impossible to draw conclusions from the report. It is certainly impossible to draw any conclusion of racism. We may be seeing nothing more than evidence that in large urban school districts with heavy percentages of minority students, the use of suspensions at the preschool levels is more widespread.
Charges of racism in schools are very serious things. Despite the common practice today of calling everything that does not agree with the liberal agenda "racist", it is still intolerable that such charges are thrown into the mix on a rather constant basis. It ought to be stopped for the good of America.
First of all, the number of children suspended from preschool is tiny. There are one million children in public preschool programs across America. Fully ninety four percent are in districts that did not suspend even one child from preschool. The issue of suspensions is limited to only six percent of the districts.
Second, the focus of the report was on children who faced multiple suspensions. They totaled 2500 out of the one million kids who were in preschool. That means that the subject of the report was just one quarter of one percent of the total preschool population.
Third, the report did not address the reasons for the suspensions. We do not know why the districts chose to issue suspensions.
Fourth, the report also did not address the racial makeup of the districts that engaged in suspensions of preschool children. That could seriously change the meaning of the numbers in the report. For example, Detroit is more than 90% African American. If the schools in that city make heavy use of suspensions at the preschool level (something that we cannot tell from the report), the numbers nationwide for blacks would rise. It would not indicate racism, however, just the decision in Detroit by the African American administration that suspension is the way to bring discipline to preschool. On the other hand, if there are districts where 95% of the students are white but half the suspensions in preschool are of blacks, there would be need for further investigation to learn the reasons for the suspensions.
What all this means is that because of the small numbers involved, it is impossible to draw conclusions from the report. It is certainly impossible to draw any conclusion of racism. We may be seeing nothing more than evidence that in large urban school districts with heavy percentages of minority students, the use of suspensions at the preschool levels is more widespread.
Charges of racism in schools are very serious things. Despite the common practice today of calling everything that does not agree with the liberal agenda "racist", it is still intolerable that such charges are thrown into the mix on a rather constant basis. It ought to be stopped for the good of America.
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