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The Pros And Cons Of Zero Tolerance Policies

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Elementary students in Indianola, Mississippi were unfairly arrested when caught talking during a school assembly. Schools in the U.S. have gotten way too strict when it comes to discipline. The causes and effects of these situations may be enough to ruin the high school careers of most of these students or even produce a bigger issue. Students are being robbed of their respect and dignity when punished and accused of being potential criminals. Notice, students in these schools either don’t care or aren’t getting any better. Zero tolerance policies in U.S. schools are highly unnecessary.
U.S. schools establish unreasonable punishments towards students who break their policies. A study published in 2011 proved that about 60% were either expelled or suspended at some point in middle or high school. Also, these punishments were barely scraping the surface of being justified. “The majority of those suspensions and expulsions appear to be for offenses that did not involve behaviors that …show more content…

Only 35% of public schools and 13% of private schools are making an effort to enforce zero tolerance policies. It is true that students will have a better understanding of how to behave with zero tolerance policies made prominent, however, most students will not listen, therefore rendering zero tolerance policies useless. “Sure, kids will tell you these experiences were meaningful and that they liked them, but there’s no evidence that liking a program or experiencing an emotionally powerful presentation leads to changes in youth behavior,” says the article, “Many School Drug Prevention Programs Are Ineffective.” Students may feel that these presentations are insulting to their behavior or even distrustful. Adults in this generation force teens to be people that they want us to be, not who we want to be. Resulting in the student acting out. The behavior of students will not change for zero tolerance

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The school to prison hypothesis describes how black children enrolled in schools face racialization and discrimination constantly and it is based off the “zero tolerance” policy (T. Davidson, Education, 2018, lecture 5). This theory connects to the book because Maynard explains throughout chapter eight of how black school children are treated differently. They are more subject to punishments and are susceptible to harsher disciplines. Black students are often seen as a threat within the education system and are constantly over surveilled. The linkage between the educational and criminal justice system is strong.

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Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline Current African American high school students in Milwaukee encounter interminable punishment from biased teachers and as a result, they are incarcerated. This issue is known as the “school-to-prison” pipeline, which describes the process of students getting arrested from schools and being imprisoned. Milwaukee Government officials have passed legislation which contributed to the pipeline, allowing teachers to have biases in schools. Professionals, such as lawyers and businessmen, have conducted studies in Milwaukee to establish if a racial disparity exists between the incarceration of African American and Caucasian students. Also, members of school communities have pushed for legislation to reduce the

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Topic: In the 1970’s, many schools operating in Dade County used corporal punishment as a form of punishment for misbehavior. A male student attending a Dade County Junior High School was forcibly restrained and paddled after failing to allegedly adhere to school policies. The student claimed that the paddling of students as a means of maintaining school discipline constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Eighth Amendment; Issues: (1) Was it unconstitutional for the school to administer corporal punishment under the Eighth Amendment? (2) Did the school’s principal and vice principal violate the student’s Eighth Amendment by restraining him during punishment? (3) Under the Fourteenth Amendment, was the principal required

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It is imperative that school administrators understand the underlying argument of property rights in relation to student’s school attendance. The school administrator represents the government, and as such must provide equal protection to all students to take advantage of this right. They also must understand the relevance of taking away an individual’s right without due process of the law, which is particularly relevant to suspensions and

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McCarter describes thoroughly the consequences STPP has on the nation’s school-age youth, including but not limited to increased exposure the criminal justice system, and gives solutions that schools can implement that will hopefully limit the overwhelming amount of students coming in contact with the STPP. The article proves that zero tolerance policies are not conducive to a safe school environment and does not foster a safe learning climate for

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The literature review clearly has shown that there is a phenomenon called School to Prison, Schoolhouse to Jailhouse, or Public Education to Prison Pipeline. Therefore, Jeremy Thompson (2016) says, “Zero-tolerance policies in schools result in high suspension rates and expulsion rates among students in general, but disproportionately affect minority students, especially African-Americans because students who have been suspended or expelled are more likely than not to end up in the Criminal Justice

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This myth led to the School-to-Prison Pipeline which was the increased presence of police officers and severe punishments in schools. Teenagers, specifically black and Latino teenagers, faced harsh consequences because schools enforced zero-tolerance policies and gave excessive suspensions for any type of misbehavior. Schools tried to prevent teenage crime by implementing zero-tolerance policies within the schools. They also increased the number of police officers in schools to enforce good behavior. Schools also gave out hundreds of unnecessary suspensions a year

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Youth of color specifically are at an increased risk of being suspended at an extended time out of schools. Consequently, they are casted into the streets, which ultimately sends them into juvenile detentions or into prison. The problem of racial and ethnic disproportionality in the discipline of schools is not new issue. In 1974, in one of the earliest investigations of disciplinary policies and practices, “the Children’s Defense Fund revealed that suspension rates for African American students were between two and three times higher than those for white students”( Thomas Rudd February 05, 2015) Ongoing research are still showing that in many places, this problem have worsened significantly.

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Everyday Braxton goes to school and does the correct things needed to be known as a good kid. One day a fight happens in front of Braxton and tries to break the fight up, instead of breaking the fight up, Braxton ends up being fought also. He is told that he is punished instead of helped. In the short run everyone thinks he will learn from his mistakes, in the long run, this is ran through all of the colleges and nobody accepts him, Braxton drops out. When it comes to student misbehavior, most schools have long practiced a basic system of crime and punishment, isolating the perceived “offender” through detention or suspension.

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Many people supported the program despite the criticism and alleged failure presented by the media (newspapers and TV), and undesirable evaluation evidence. Both school district administrators and police officials supported this program because they regarded the evaluation evidence as unrealistic and not generalizable. Based on their argument, “substance abuse is a societal problem with deeply entrenched causes that no single intervention is strong enough to counter the drug pressure in society” (Birkeland et la, 2005). Therefore, decision makers found no valid reasons for discontinuing with the program. The authors found that the program developed and built harmonious relations between police officials, school administrators, students and their families.

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Remove or Revise Zero-tolerance policies are policies that have been adapted in work places, communities, and, most frequently, schools. Depending on how certain schools are run and who they are run by, zero-tolerance policies could be positive and helpful or negative and harmful. Many people wonder are these policies really effective in reducing crime and creating safer environments in schools like lawmakers claim these policies are doing ; most of the opponents to zero-tolerance policies believe that the policies are just cruel punishments that add to the problems that already exist in our schools and communities. There are obviously those who feel that the policies do exactly what they say they do; advocates for zero-tolerance policies

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The Zero Tolerance Policy is a major worldwide issue. Statistically it has been a problem in schools for many reasons but mainly because most believe it 's a racial factor in schools. It also brings down academic levels and a child 's learning ability. While researching the statistics I found out that many researchers have discovered that black students are more likely to get suspended, expelled, or juvenile consequences over white students. On the pbs.org website it stated that “Black students make up about 16 percent of the nation’s population in school, they account for about 45 percent of the kids who face juvenile arrest.”

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923 Words | 4 Pages

As the war on drugs broke out in the 1980s, many schools took the initiative to crack down harder on their students in an effort to maintain school order. Due to the harsher drug policies, schools initiated the zero-tolerance approach. Seen as highly controversial, many wonder how well the zero-tolerance policy works. While some advocate the need for a no-nonsense approach in the face of increasing school violence, evidence has shown that it is actually debilitating to students learning when schools use suspension and expulsion as a means to maintain control. Not to mention, that the zero-tolerance approach has raised numerous questions on the treatment of minorities, inconsistent application, and many other school issues.

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It wasn 't just students and their parents - civil rights groups got involved, as did educators, and even juvenile judges sounded alarm at the number of young people who came out of zero tolerance with arrest records and other disciplinary millstones around their necks. The Obama Justice Department has also pressed school districts to find alternatives to arrest and expulsion. In recent years, Florida has indeed changed its approach - a 2009 amendment puts more discretion in the hands of school administrators to discipline students. A number of counties have also set up alternative sanctions for infractions - counseling, community service and other rehabilitative programs aim to help students improve their behavior, unlike expulsion, which left students to wander the streets during the day, fall behind on school work and get into even more trouble.

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“Over 60% of teens claim drugs are used on school grounds”(Fitzgerald). Over the years, schools have not been doing anything to prevent this. Teens revealed that, “1 in 5 of their classmates either drink, use drugs, or smoke during school hours on school grounds” (Fitzgerald). More studies show that, “17% of high school students use drugs daily.” Kids in schools know someone who either does drugs, or sells drugs on school grounds (“School”).

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