School Discipline: Issues of Equity and Effectiveness
Speaker: Russell Skiba
Lecture Title: School Discipline: Issues of Equity and Effectiveness
Moderator: Deborah Becker, WBUR
Commentators: Rachelle Engler Bennett, Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education, Matt Cregor, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, and William Rodriguez, Wheelock College
Date: Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Time: 6:30 p.m. ET
City: Boston
Location: JFK Presidential Library and Museum
WATCH THE FULL LECTURE AND FORUM
View photos from the Lecture here.
View a five minute recap of the Lecture here.
About the Lecture
How should we develop and maintain safe, productive, and equitable learning climates for all students? That question is at the heart of 20 years of controversial zero-tolerance school discipline policies. Far from being effective interventions, these exclusionary approaches to discipline have (1) failed to guarantee school safety or improve student behavior; (2) placed students at risk for further negative short- and long-term outcomes—the school-to-prison pipeline; and (3) disproportionately targeted students by race, class, disability, and sexual orientation. There has been a significant movement from exclusionary to preventive approaches in a number of major school districts across the nation. Yet the emerging nature of preventive alternatives, and local resource gaps, have also led to some pushback from educators at the ground level, who fear that loss of exclusion as a discipline tool will create chaos and increase school disruption and violence. In this lecture, Russell Skiba will analyze research on the history and current status of school discipline reform. Placing the issues of effectiveness and social justice at the heart of disciplinary reform within this framework will help inform next steps in developing more effective and equitable systems for keeping schools safe without sacrificing students.
About Russell Skiba
Russell Skiba, Ph.D. is a Professor in the School Psychology program at Indiana University and Director of the Equity Project at Indiana University, a consortium of federal, state, and foundation-funded grants providing evidence to practitioners and policymakers in the areas of school violence, zero tolerance, and equity in education. His research focuses on the overuse of exclusionary discipline, and in particular factors that contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in exclusionary school discipline. He was a member of the writing team that produced the U.S. Department of Education's document on school safety Early Warning, Timely Response, and a member and lead author of the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Zero Tolerance. In Indiana, he served in 2008 as co-chair of the Education Subcommittee of the Indiana Commission on Disproportionality in Youth Services, a statewide commission that led to the passage of three bills addressing disproportionality in education. Skiba has testified before the United States Civil Rights Commission, both Houses of Congress, and the National Academy of Sciences on issues of school discipline and school violence. He was awarded the Push for Excellence Award by the Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH for his work on African American disproportionality in school suspension. In 2016, he was selected by Education Week as among the top 200 scholars in the nation influencing educational policy and practice. Most recently, he served as the lead facilitator and organizer for the Discipline Disparities Research to Practice Collaborative, a group of 26 national educators, researchers, advocates, and policymakers whose work helped highlight and advance knowledge and practice with respect to the effects of and interventions for disparities in exclusionary discipline.
Lecture Title: School Discipline: Issues of Equity and Effectiveness
Moderator: Deborah Becker, WBUR
Commentators: Rachelle Engler Bennett, Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education, Matt Cregor, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, and William Rodriguez, Wheelock College
Date: Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Time: 6:30 p.m. ET
City: Boston
Location: JFK Presidential Library and Museum
WATCH THE FULL LECTURE AND FORUM
View photos from the Lecture here.
View a five minute recap of the Lecture here.
About the Lecture
How should we develop and maintain safe, productive, and equitable learning climates for all students? That question is at the heart of 20 years of controversial zero-tolerance school discipline policies. Far from being effective interventions, these exclusionary approaches to discipline have (1) failed to guarantee school safety or improve student behavior; (2) placed students at risk for further negative short- and long-term outcomes—the school-to-prison pipeline; and (3) disproportionately targeted students by race, class, disability, and sexual orientation. There has been a significant movement from exclusionary to preventive approaches in a number of major school districts across the nation. Yet the emerging nature of preventive alternatives, and local resource gaps, have also led to some pushback from educators at the ground level, who fear that loss of exclusion as a discipline tool will create chaos and increase school disruption and violence. In this lecture, Russell Skiba will analyze research on the history and current status of school discipline reform. Placing the issues of effectiveness and social justice at the heart of disciplinary reform within this framework will help inform next steps in developing more effective and equitable systems for keeping schools safe without sacrificing students.
About Russell Skiba
Russell Skiba, Ph.D. is a Professor in the School Psychology program at Indiana University and Director of the Equity Project at Indiana University, a consortium of federal, state, and foundation-funded grants providing evidence to practitioners and policymakers in the areas of school violence, zero tolerance, and equity in education. His research focuses on the overuse of exclusionary discipline, and in particular factors that contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in exclusionary school discipline. He was a member of the writing team that produced the U.S. Department of Education's document on school safety Early Warning, Timely Response, and a member and lead author of the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Zero Tolerance. In Indiana, he served in 2008 as co-chair of the Education Subcommittee of the Indiana Commission on Disproportionality in Youth Services, a statewide commission that led to the passage of three bills addressing disproportionality in education. Skiba has testified before the United States Civil Rights Commission, both Houses of Congress, and the National Academy of Sciences on issues of school discipline and school violence. He was awarded the Push for Excellence Award by the Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH for his work on African American disproportionality in school suspension. In 2016, he was selected by Education Week as among the top 200 scholars in the nation influencing educational policy and practice. Most recently, he served as the lead facilitator and organizer for the Discipline Disparities Research to Practice Collaborative, a group of 26 national educators, researchers, advocates, and policymakers whose work helped highlight and advance knowledge and practice with respect to the effects of and interventions for disparities in exclusionary discipline.