History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Organizations call for easing harsh discipline rules at public schools
- 10-04-2011
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By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/KPCC
Some education activists say public school discipline has grown too harsh in reaction to the deadly Columbine, Colorado high school shootings more than a decade ago. Southern California activists are participating in a national effort this week to reform school discipline. Barbara Raymond with the California Endowment says that most of last year’s 720,000 suspensions and expulsions at state public schools had nothing to do with violence, drugs or weapons. "The vast majority of suspensions are for much lower level incidents," Raymond says, "things that we used to be kept, they would keep us after school, and now kids are being kicked out of school. So this is like misconduct, disruption in the classroom, something that in California we call 'willful defiance.'" Suspensions, Raymond says, don’t provide the kinds of tools that students and teachers need to work through discipline problems. (more...)
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