Published with permission of the author. A similar piece ran as an Op-Ed in the Rochester Post-Bulletin on October 6, 2017.
School’s in. School discipline is back in the news. A recent Post-Bulletin story told us of the Rochester Public Schools’ (RPS) work to improve consistency across the district for definitions of, and responses to, student misbehavior. Improvement and consistency are good things. What’s not a good thing is miscategorizing disciplinary discrepancies as racism, as was done earlier this year. As discipline efforts continue, let’s be sure we’re solving real problems.
The Office Referrals chart shows each ethnicity’s percentage of the student population and of their office referrals. The line shows the Out of Whack Index (OWI) that measures how much more, or less, members of each ethnic group were sent to the office compared to their representation in the student population. (The district’s study didn’t call it OWI.) An OWI less than one indicates a lower rate of office referrals than the overall population. An OWI greater than one indicates a higher rate.
Because the OWI for Black students was greater than any other, the district was said to have a racism problem. The analysis’ primary author declared, “we have a disparity that’s due to race.” A Rochester for Justice leader asserted, “the difficulty we have around the issue is actually calling it what it is. That’s racism.” Balderdash.
Are the OWI values different by ethnic group? Yes. Does the data tell us it is due to racism? No. If it did, it also tells us the school district is sexist: the OWI ratio of Male compared to Female is almost as great (3.3) as between Black and White (3.8). Nobody noticed? Nobody cares about sexism in our schools?
If you think those are silly questions, good. Because, based on the data, they are no sillier than the claim of racism. I understand that black and hispanic students are the subject of proactive measures to reduce the discrepancy. Shouldn’t male students be, too? Perhaps an appropriate response to reduce the need for male discipline is to have everyone use the women’s bathrooms. Students that use the women’s bathrooms are significantly less likely to incur disciplinary action than those who use other bathrooms. It’s in the data. More silliness? No sillier than working on proactive responses to misdiagnosed racism.
Looking at similar data from the National Basketball Association (NBA) we see that most of the players are black. Using the same analysis on NBA rosters as for school discipline, we have a roster OWI for Black players of 6.3: considerably greater than the RPS discipline OWI for Black students. Is the NBA racist?
If they follow the data as they did for their study, its authors and Rochester for Justice have to say yes: this data analysis and result are equivalent. But I doubt they would say that. I wouldn’t. Why not?
Though the disparate impact is obvious we’re not incensed about the NBA’s racial disparity because we understand that teams consider other things, not reflected in the data, to choose players: things like ball handling, shooting, and rebounding – factors relevant to playing basketball.
Just as there are skills that make a good basketball player, there are behaviors that deserve discipline. What was shockingly and inexcusably missing from the discipline study was any attempt to quantify the degree to which students actually misbehaved and whether the discipline was justified based on the behavior. In basketball terms, can s/he play? In discipline terms, did s/he do it? The report didn’t even present the question much less attempt to answer it. If we are suspending students for behaviors for which suspension is appropriate, there is no problem with discipline (or justice), there is a problem with student behavior or suspension guidelines or a combination of both.
Avoiding or ignoring real issues and pertinent facts makes our leadership and consultants no better than quacks. If our esteemed Mayo brothers and their early partners had practiced medicine the way our school district, their consultants, and our social justices have analyzed data, the only thing they’d be known for is snake oil.
Efforts going forward should concentrate on a healthy environment for all students that includes high expectations and accomplishment. Discipline is a good thing. Disciplinary consistency is a good thing. Continuous improvement is a good thing. Accusing an entire education system of racism due solely to a misguided “analysis” is a bad thing. Let’s take care to see and solve real problems, not prejudiced ones.
—Bruce Kaskubar
