Study: Black males twice as likely to be suspended at schools in Virginia
According to a joint report released by the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Charlottesville’s Legal Aid Justice Center, black males are twice as likely to be suspended from schools in the state than white male students.
Most African American students are being suspended for relatively minor offenses, such as disrupting the class or talking loudly.
The joint report also unveils the results of a new study demonstrating that use of the Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines, developed by U.Va. professor Dewey Cornell, is associated with lower rates of school suspensions, including a smaller racial discipline gap. Schools using the guidelines have substantially lower rates of school suspensions, especially among black males.
At schools implementing threat assessment, 15 percent fewer students received short-term suspensions and 25 percent fewer students received long-term suspensions.
Currently threat assessment guidelines are used in more than a dozen states. Threat assessment is defined as ” a violence prevention strategy that begins with an evaluation of persons who threaten to harm others and is followed by interventions designed to reduce the risk of violence.”
Should threat assessment programs be mandatory for all schools?
Do you see the programs as potentially having a great impact on the school-to-prison pipeline?
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