Black students across the nation are much more likely to be suspended from school than white students -- and educators are troubled by it.
While 12 percent of all black students nationally were suspended in 1992, only 4 percent of all white students were suspended the same year, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights Division.
Educators offer various explanations for the difference in suspension rates, pointing to cultural misunderstanding, discrimination, bad home training and low socio-economic level. But the debate boils down to whether the students or the schools are at fault.
The same trend that is seen nationally is also seen in the Baltimore area.
In Anne Arundel County, more than 30 percent of students who were suspended last school year were black, even though blacks make up only 19 percent of the student population.
Anne Arundel school officials signed an agreement in December with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights to ensure that race is not a factor in student discipline cases. The county has until Aug. 31 to appoint a committee to review student suspensions and other problems.
In Howard County, more than 30 percent of the suspended students were black, but blacks are just 15 percent of the student population.
And the latest disciplinary report, issued in September, included what Howard school officials described as an "alarming trend:" The disproportionate -- and increasing -- number of black elementary school students being suspended.
Blacks make up 14 percent of elementary school pupils. Yet the 24 black grade school students who were temporarily expelled last year accounted for 52 percent of all elementary school suspensions.
Baltimore and Harford counties report similar trends. So does Carroll County, where 5 percent of the students who were suspended were black, but black students make up 2 percent of the student population.
Ed Davis, Carroll County's director of pupil services, argues that the 53 black students who were suspended constitute too small a number to draw any statistical conclusions.
"When you're talking about numbers that are that small, I'm not sure valid conclusions can be drawn on [such] limited data," he says. "I would hope what we are doing are
suspending for suspendable reasons -- disruptions, whatever -- and that we are focusing on the act and not the person."
Other school officials, while unsure of the cause, believe that the figures represent more than a statistical anomaly.
"The disparity piece is one that keeps troubling us," says Dana Hanna, the Howard school board chairman. "Obviously, some of it is a societal thing and a cultural thing.
"We would like to reach a point where our total delivery of education is even-handed," Mr. Hanna says. "That's particularly why we've been working on several initiatives to identify clearly and rectify the problem."
Donald R. Morrison, Harford County schools' director of information, echoes the sentiment.
"There is no denying the figures," he says. "It's something that we are taking seriously and something we are attempting . . . to mitigate and to take steps to reverse the trend."
Black students are suspended more "because of history and misconceived notions and beliefs that African-American students are going to demonstrate disruptive behavior," said Patricia Morris, dean of Morgan State University's School of Education and Urban Studies. "It has to do a lot with the misunderstanding of culture and low expectations of how African-Americans behave. When persons . . . don't fully understand cultural attitudes, African-American students are often times misunderstood."
On the other hand, Tom Mooney, president of the Cincinnati chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, says bad home training is more to blame. "We believe the suspension rates are much more correlated to poverty than race," he says. "It seems pretty obvious . . . that poor kids don't know norms of behavior."
Are schools at fault?
Dr. Morris argues that some students act up because of the way schools treat them. Others are punished, she says, for what is, for them, normal behavior.
As an example of misunderstood behavior, she says, African-American students go through what is called stage setting: They have to set up their work area before they're ready to start their lessons.
"Some African-American students take a long time to set up their work area," she said. "It's a notion this has to be here, this has to be there. If you're not aware of that as a teacher, you can see that as delaying task, delaying work, when actually, it's a matter of setting the stage for work."
Black students aren't the only misunderstood group, she says. Native American students, for example, hold their heads down when they're being reprimanded, even when a teacher or administrator asks them to look the teacher in the eye. The teacher may regard the student's action as a behavioral problem, but "that's a sign of respect, not disrespect," she say.
James McPartland, co-director at the Johns Hopkins University's Center for the Social Organization of Schools, says the fact that black students are suspended disproportionately shows that school systems are slow to accommodate the rainbow of children -- growing numbers of Hispanics and Asians as well as blacks and whites -- attending their schools.
"This, along with tracking, grade retention and excessive special education placement, is an indication that schools don't know how to deal with diverse students' needs," he says. "This is an emerging topic in educational research and development -- how to take advantage of the cultural heritage and strengths of kids."
Dr. McPartland says school systems need to be able to teach different ethnic children according to how they learn in their own culture. "In general," he says, "many kids feel uncomfortable in school because it doesn't match the learning environment in their community, in their churches, in their homes.
"It may be that some students [such as Latino and African-American children] do better in cooperative learning environments than highly competitive ones," he says. "It might be some youngsters do better when it's a supportive peer environment. There's also a matter of the mode in which learning activities are presented. Some kids might want to do practical items more than theoretical ones."
Al Tony Gilmore, senior professional associate with the Washington, D.C.-based National Education Association, says people must look to the overall climate of the school system: its policy on hiring minority teachers, the percentage of minority students going on to higher education and their percentage in special education classes, as examples.
"These become factors that can contribute to the behavior of African-American students," he says.
He says, though, that cultural miscommunication plays a large part. Some "supervisory personnel and teachers all bring preconceived notions [that African-American students] are much more difficult to teach," he says. "I think they feel many African-American males have disciplinary problems or problems of academic achievement."
There's also what he calls disproportionate policing: educators who pick on black students more when handing down punishment.
"Teachers are no different than judges and their perceptions of African-American males. Judges are no different from police officers in their perception of African-American males."
Are students to blame?
"I don't discount race as a factor," Mr. Mooney, the Cincinnati teachers union official, says. "But if you simplify it, you're missing the mark."
What's happening in society nowadays, he says, is adults have stopped blaming children for their actions. "When I was in school, I had some teachers who were really boring. I also had some teachers personality-wise that I didn't get along with. But if acted like a fool . . . I was responsible. The teachers weren't accountable for my actions.
"We have really let children run the show," Mr. Mooney says. "They have figured out they have the upper hand. Adults have lost the battle of nerves and left the children in charge."
Hilda Barrett, a Columbia teacher of 38 years, says she sees more unruly children than before.
"When I started out, you were treated with respect," she says. "When you walked to a door, the kids would break their neck to open it for you. Now they will knock you down to get there before you to get through.
"I also see a lot of our black children -- I'm saying this as an African-American -- I see a lot of our children in dire need of discipline," she says. "I'm certainly aware of times when students misbehave and they are not suspended for fear of repercussion. That is not fair to the teachers, and that is not fair to other children.
"We expect them to have middle-class values, and they're not exposed to that," she continues. "Or we would have to work toward having them assimilate more to middle-class values. That's why they're such oddballs, and they know it."
James Swab, president of the Howard County Education Association and a former social studies teacher at Glenelg High School in Howard County, argues that when educators suspend students, they do so because students have broken the rules.
"Teachers and administrators go out of their way to be fair, to treat all kids equally and to ensure that all kids conform to a standard of behavior conducive to a proper learning environment," Mr. Swab says. "We would be concerned if we found a teacher or an administrator who was applying different standards of behavior to different groups. But we haven't found that."
James Bennett, principal at Havre de Grace High School in Harford County, points out that by policy, students must face certain punishment if they break disciplinary rules. For example, he says, a student who hits another student gets a three-day suspension on the first offense, a five-day suspension on the second offense.
"We set consequences for our behavior and repetitions of behavior," he says. "We make it known to everyone involved. If you're not going to come to school, for example, the state of Maryland has set a standard that we follow and students follow. If you don't come, you don't get grades."
But he agrees that students' socio-economic level plays a role in student suspension and with the theory that teachers and administrators sometimes have misunderstand each other because of cultural differences. And he says people must also look at the level of parental involvement in their children's education.
"I don't think we get enough help from the home," he says. "By the time we get to suspension, those young people have not had the intervention of a parent [who works with the school] to try to change the behavior and modify the behavior. Unfortunately, we have students from single-parent homes or parents who work long hours and they don't have time. Too often they're leaving the responsibility on us, and it's totally ours. We need help."
Lan Nguyen is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.