| ||||||
School District Size Often Determines Fate of Zero Tolerance |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From University of Florida : The size of the school district often determines whether students are punished under zero tolerance policies and given another chance for an education, a new University of Florida study finds. In Florida, larger school districts are more likely than smaller ones to have mandatory expulsion policies for students who bring guns to schools and to impose mandatory suspension for the possession of knives and drugs, as well as bullying, said Brian Schoonover, who completed the research for his doctoral dissertation in education at UF. "Children are increasingly being sent to judges and jails for offenses that traditionally were dealt with in the principal's office and after-school detentions," said Schoonover, who is scheduled to present his findings Tuesday at the National Conference for Safe Schools and Communities in Washington, D.C. "Thirty years ago it would have been unusual to see a child handcuffed by a police officer. Because Florida school districts respect each other's expulsions, expelled students have no classroom to attend unless their parents can afford to send them to a private school that will take them, he said. Currently, all 50 states have zero tolerance policies mentioned in their state laws, but Texas is the only state that requires schools to investigate intent before expelling a student from school for a violation, Schoonover said. Differences were more pronounced for knives, with 88 percent of large districts having mandatory suspension policies, compared with 47 percent of small districts. Next to guns, policies citing drugs were the most common, with 88 percent of large districts and 74 percent of small districts having mandatory suspension. AScribe Newswire distributes news from nonprofit and public sector organizations.
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
