Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice by Aaron Kupchik
Big thanks to New
York University Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of
Aaron Kupchik’s excellent new book Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice. Kupchik, a professor of Sociology at the
University of Delaware, focuses his research interests on juvenile justice and
how youths in schools are punished and policed. I was interested in reading
this book because as a teacher, I am also curious to see how instances of
racial injustice in society are often implemented or reproduced in other social systems like schools.
Furthermore, I’ve read some other books that have addressed similar issues
about school punishment of minorities, especially Black students. A few years
ago, as part of a book group at work, we read Monique Morris’s Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, which details how
teachers, administrators and the school system frequently punishes rather than
supports young Black girls. Bettina Love’s Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal focuses more on reforms
intended to improve schools, but ultimately end up harming children, especially
children of color. Dr. Love examines the ways that programs and approaches to
discipline ultimately leave children of color with fewer options and do not
offer second chances after mistakes. I
also recently read Eve Ewing’s excellent Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism,
in which she examines the history of exclusion and the kind of unequal
opportunities that Black and Indigenous children had, and how these limited
opportunities have furthered inequalities today. Ewing’s book also looks at
disparities in punishment in schools, and the kind of impact they have.
Needless to say, Kupchik’s focus on school punishment of Black students,
especially the use of suspensions, is an important topic that has only been
more recently examined. As Kupchik details, the use of suspensions was
pervasive, if not widely reported, in many schools in the US, especially after
school integration. I found this to be one of the more interesting elements of
Dr. Kupchik’s argument—that after integration (or after the end of
segregation), there was an increase in the use of suspension with disparate
instances of Black students suspended from schools. We know from research and
reports from the Obama administration’s Department of Education that Black
students, especially Black male students, were more likely to be suspended for
longer periods of time than other groups. Similarly, as Morris details in her
book, Black girls are also more likely to be suspended and expelled than their
white peers. However, Kupchik’s research and analysis explores the historical
origins of the use of suspension and a disciplinary tool by examining two areas
and districts as case studies.
In addition to
being interesting in the topic of school punishment, I also grew more
interested in Kupchik’s book because I worked in one of the school districts
that he analyzed for his research. Early in my teaching career, I worked in the
Colonial School District in New Castle, Delaware (My first day in the school
was September 11, 2001). I had little experience teaching, and virtually no
experience or training in working with students who were from different
backgrounds, culturally, socially, economically. I attended Catholic school my
entire K-12 education, and I probably suffered from the apprenticeship of
observation, where teachers tended to teach the way they were taught. My
experience teaching in Delaware definitely jolted me out of that misguided way
of teaching. Not only because there was a diverse student body who let teachers
know when teaching methods weren’t working, but there was also a great amount
of professional development and support. I also participated in a professional
development after school program that was grant funded, where we participated
in a book club that furthered our understanding of how to create more engaging
literacy activities for students. I know for a fact that this program,
collaboration with colleagues, and the various PD opportunities throughout the
school year really helped me grow as a teacher, but also helped me develop more
engaging and responsive teaching methods that leveraged student experiences and
prior knowledge to engage them. This approach also helped with discipline,
where I didn’t have to rely on sending students out of the classroom or writing
them up. I don’t remember many student suspensions. I do remember that truancy
was a problem for some students, but the school operated an In School
Suspension room (ISS), which I don’t think was much better than Out-Of-School
Suspension. The ISS room had no windows, and teachers had to send packets of
work to keep students busy. Although there were other students in the room,
there was no noise allowed. I hated that learning was reduced to worksheets,
but this was the approach to keep students in school. Reading Kupchik’s
analysis and critique of discipline in Delaware’s schools after desegregation
made me think of the ISS room as a possible response to the criticisms from the
1980s of this unequal measure of discipline that Black students endured.
Additionally, I also thought about my lack of awareness about desegregation in
Delaware. As Dr. Kupchik notes in the background and history of desegregation,
not all states willingly desegregated. Although the Supreme Court declared the
policy of separate but equal unconstitutional, it would be another 24 years or
so before Delaware officially desegregated, becoming one of the last to do so. Prior
to the official desegregation, segregation academies, schools set up with
exclusionary policies in desegregated areas, appeared and continued the inequalities
of education. Unfortunately, these schools continue to persist, and with
vouchers becoming a possibility across the country, it would seem that this
kind of inequality masked as parents’ choice or rights would thrive.
Nevertheless, Dr. Kupchik’s description of the long, drawn-out process of
desegregating Delaware schools made me think about the kind of tension I faced
as a young white teacher with Black students. Working with students throughout
the year, I think we gradually built a rapport, but there was definitely some
tension and suspicion. My Black colleagues were incredibly helpful in
discussing how to work with students and develop buy in and motivate them.
However, I think that the recent history of segregation, probably only a
generation removed from my students, most likely instilled some suspicion and
doubt about school. I also remember talking to a colleague about beaches in
Delaware as summer approached. They mentioned not really liking beaches since
they had to avoid the white beaches. It was an eye opening experience for me, a
young white teacher whose belief in racism and segregation was that the Brown
Decision in 1954 largely ended both. I think my experience working in Delaware
helped me as a teacher and it also made me realize the kinds of disparities and
inequalities that still exist. After 2 years, I left to teach in Philly, where
I worked in a school that largely had a zero-tolerance policy, and can
recognize how damaging suspensions can be, not only for students, but also as
Dr. Kupchik notes, for parents as well, who most likely have to miss work to
either come to the school for a meeting or arrange care for students. We also witnessed
students who willfully missed school because they just didn’t want to be there
or that it wasn’t a good space for them. Dr. Kupchik’s description of this kind
of punishment is accurate, and I’m really glad that this book is available for
researchers and educators who can see the kinds of damage that have resulted in
the use of suspensions as discipline.
What I also found
interesting about this book is that Dr. Kupchik ties the use of suspensions
into the desegregation movement. In his research, including interviews with
community members, analysis of media coverage, and other artifacts from school board
meetings, Dr. Kupchik discovered that there was little to no mention of suspensions
prior to the desegregation periods in New Castle and Boston. However, after
desegregation occurred, and students were bussed to new, integrated schools,
the suspensions rose for both White and Black students, but with Black students
suspended at a much higher rate. I also appreciated how Dr. Kupchik presents
his data in charts and graphs, identifying the disparities and differences in
these suspension rates. I hadn’t thought about how suspensions might have been
a reaction to desegregation, but Dr. Kupchik’s thorough and detailed research
and analysis presents a compelling argument. Furthermore, he makes a point that
not all educators are racist, and this increase in inequitable punishment might
not have been completely the result of explicit racism. As he notes, some
educators still believe that suspension is a just punishment, and are not aware
of their implicit biases. In his analysis, Dr. Kupchik explores the idea that
one of the possible reasons for these suspensions could be that it was a
systemic method of punishment; that is, as other schools struggled with the cultural,
social, and pedagogical changes that resulted from desegregation, they may have
seen schools using suspension as punishment, and it became an acceptable form
of punishment. I appreciated this point of view, especially as Dr. Kupchik presents
perspectives from educators and administrators I’ve witnessed and worked with. I
think this also helps to confirm that while some of them may have been working
towards good intentions, the pervasiveness of suspensions may have shifted
their perspectives and understanding about its ultimate damages. Furthermore, Dr.
Kupchik explains how suspensions not only damage the students’ learning but
also lead to long-term generational damage to learning. I really appreciated the
research and analysis of this issue, as well as examining suspensions from
their earliest use, and hypothesizing that they were largely a reaction to
desegregation. Dr. Kupchik shared some of the chaos that resulted from the
earlier days after desegregation, and it made me wonder how much guidance and
support schools and districts were given in implementing desegregation. While
desegregation is important and necessary, it’s not something that could be done
overnight. I know from my experience teaching how important professional
development, observations, and other collaboration with colleagues were in
helping me identify issues with my management and instruction, learning new
strategies and methods to engage students, and also learning about my own
implicit biases that may have affected discipline and instruction. I wondered
how much support teachers had in understanding culturally responsive teaching
or cultural incongruity in the classroom. Although there is a movement to keep
students in schools more, I hope that educators read Dr. Kupchik’s book to
better understand the issues related to suspensions and how they were initiated
in American schools. More importantly, if educators read any part of this book,
I really hope that they read the “Conclusion” chapter. Dr. Kupchik makes a
great argument for the importance of studying issues using a framework that is critical
of race. He identifies some of the bad faith arguments and the kinds of
misconstrued “reverse racism” that is merely a means to avoid discussing
important and relevant social issues. I really appreciated his defense of these
theories by defending the criticisms as harmful distortions. I also find this
to be true. I have never known any educator to teach students these theories,
but it is such an important part of understanding our students’ differences and
how to make them learn better. Furthermore, as a white teacher who worked with mostly
Black students, I had a lot to learn from them, and my students’ experiences
really confirmed many of these ideas about race and racism. It didn’t make me
feel bad about being white. Rather, it made me want to do more to support them
and help other people understand the kinds of injustices and inequalities that
are existent in the world. The conclusion of this book was a powerful defense
of the kind of framework that critically examines racism and injustice and sees
it as embedded in many of the systems in our society. Furthermore, Dr. Kupchik
presents some helpful alternatives to discipline that schools have been and
should continue to employ to improve educational outcomes for all students, but
especially those students who have been subjected to inequal discipline. As I
was reading this book, the Department of Education basically eliminated the
Office of Civil Rights, ostensibly making it more difficult to enforce fair and
equitable treatment for students across America. While I have hope that schools
will continue to educate students and improve on creating more fair and
equitable discipline measures, I also recognize that the burden will fall on
educators, administrators, and parents to monitor these practices and ensure
that justice and equity are enforced. Nevertheless, these recent changes in federal
departments make reading Suspended
Education all the more important.
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