COMMENTARY Education

No, Taking Police Out of Schools and Refusing to Discipline Won’t Help Brown Kids

Oct 15, 2020 1 min read

Commentary By

Hans A. von Spakovsky @HvonSpakovsky

Election Law Reform Initiative Manager, Senior Legal Fellow

Jonathan Butcher @JM_Butcher

Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy

To improve these conditions, families deserve robust policy solutions. Thomas Barwick/Getty Images

Key Takeaways

Research demonstrates that limiting exclusionary discipline does not improve student learning nor make members of a school community feel safer.

Quota-based systems that discipline students differently depending on their race or ethnicity do not take into account critical factors that affect behavior.

Teachers and parents should work together to evaluate each incident on its own merits and make decisions in a child’s best interests regardless of his or her race.

Copied

Dangerous calls from activists to “defund the police,” including school police, were splashed across the headlines over the summer. Now officials in one school district at the forefront of the movement are having second thoughts.

Minneapolis Public School officials were among the first to announce they were canceling their contract with local law enforcement for school security after the tragic incident involving George Floyd occurred in that city. That the episode happened in Minneapolis was the only thing connecting local public schools, law enforcement, and Floyd. The incident had nothing to do with school safety nor the performance of local law enforcement in the schools.

Read the full article on The Federalist.

This piece originally appeared in the Federalist on 10/13/20