The OCR as a tool in dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline

05-27-2011

By Rosa K. Hirji and Benétta M. Standly/The American Bar Association

In the midst of an 11 percent spike in discrimination complaints filed with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) last year, as well as the release of independent reports revealing the high rates of disciplinary action against African American students, the OCR has announced a reinvigorated approach to enforcing civil rights statutes that uses a disparate impact analysis. Education Week (Oct. 12, 2010); see also Dan Losen and Russell Skiba, Southern Poverty Law Center, Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis (2010); National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Misplaced Priorities: Under Educate, Over Incarcerate, (2010); ACLU of Florida, Still Haven’t Shut Off the School to Prison Pipeline: Evaluating Florida’s New Zero Tolerance Policy Law, (2011). The movement against the “school-to-prison pipeline” must examine the significance of this change in the investigation of racial disparities in school discipline in the context of its overall goals. From this perspective, how much can we rely on the OCR to remedy the school-to-prison pipeline in communities of color, and does this represent a step forward? (more...)

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