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What Are The Arguments Against Zero Tolerance

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In 1994, the United States Congress passed the Gun-Free Schools Act. This act mandated that if any student were to be found with a fire-arm in their possession on campus, their school was then required to give them an at least one-year expulsion. Support for this act significantly strengthened after the Columbine School Shooting in 1999, and thus zero tolerance policies as we know them began (Glanzer). Since the initial act in 1994, school policies have changed greatly. Now, all schools across the United States exhibit zero tolerance to most all negative behaviors – doling out serious punishments for not only the possession of fire-arms, but anything resembling any type of weapon, including a miniature gun on a Lego toy, any kind of drug, including ibuprofen, and even mere disobedience towards authority. …show more content…

One would think that having an automatic punishment for breaking the rules would mean that there would be next to no discrimination in discipline. That isn’t the case. Zero tolerance policies actually have worse effects on students of color, low income students, and special education students in comparison to others. Some will argue for zero tolerance policies, saying it prepares you for the real world (Whitehead). These people ignore that while the real world can be a very corrupt place, it is also a place of democracy and equal opportunity, two things that are very limited in schools with zero tolerance policies.
Zero tolerance policies don’t allow for differentiating between students, which is arguably one of its major problems (Saenz). By responding to every behavioral problem the same, the potential reasoning behind those misbehaving is continuously ignored.
“We end up punishing honor students to send a message to bad kids. But the data indicate that the bad kids are not getting the message.” — Professor Russell Skiba

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These include turning in work late, skipping class, and wearing clothes that aren’t in dress code. Because of the lack of consequences, students continue to engage in these activities and the behavior spreads. At the beginning

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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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When compared to white children, black students miss nearly five times as many days of school due to out-of-school suspensions. Due to students missing school and missing work, this is creating more students who do not complete their education, which makes for a more likely chance to face negative outcomes such as poverty, poor health, or incarceration. The type of school discipline that creates disparities can relate to differences in learning opportunities. The harsher the discipline, the more disparities students may have in learning. It is a difficult system to escape for those students who are eventually reprimanded within the school-to-prison

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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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People questioned if the government should abandon the gun-free school zone policy enacted during the Clinton administration. Students for Concealed Carry organized in support of permitting concealed firearms on campus, and in defense, the organization Keep Guns Off Campus assembled. The issue of conceal and carry persists as more mass shootings on school grounds, such as Sandy Hook, occur. Gun opponents lobby against the regulations fearing it will create more violent crimes, but enthusiasts campaign to relax regulation on gun-free zones on colleges. Gun-rights advocates and conservative lawmakers claim it will curb acts of criminality from possible gunmans, but gun-control advocates argue against that conviction.

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My school would greatly benefit from the application of an honor code as long as such a code is approved by the student body. Such an honor code would bring about students to reconsider their actions before cheating on a test. This is because an honor code has the ability to create a culture among students which discourages cheating. Also, including harsh punishments within the honor code would dishearten students from cheating out of fear of potential consequences. Schools which have not benefited from honor codes are very different from Classical, and therefore do not prove that an honor code would be ineffective at Classical.

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School shootings are starting to become a norm in today 's world. This is something we can only take precautions for but, we cannot completely stop school shootings from happening. Banning guns is not the option because the shooters are still going to find a way to get their guns. We should not punish everybody for the stupidity of some people 's actions. "At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado two teens went on a shooting spree on April 20, 1999, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide" (Columbine Shooting, 2018).

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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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How can one focus on learning when they are brimming with fear that their school could be the next site of a shooting? It is difficult to see a brighter future when it seems the American government can only provide empty promises to ban even “bump stocks”, an accessory commonly used to make deadly weapons even more lethal. “We cannot merely take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference. We must actually make a difference” (Johnson). Though some may argue that firearms are necessary to defend ourselves and that it is our given right to own them.

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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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Introduction There is an ongoing abuse of the zero-tolerance policy that continues to affect the lives of minority girls in schools in the public and private school sector. The current literature supports data that show that minorities are severely impacted by the policies. However, there is a gap in the literature that addresses the magnitude of how minority girls are impacted by these policies. Furthermore, due to the zero-tolerance policies, cultural differences are not even considered. Due to a lack of a universally accepted definition of zero tolerance, there are only estimates of the frequency of enforcement (Daly, Hildenbrand, Haney-Caron, Goldstein, Galloway, and DeMatteo, 2016).

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This world has become filled with unimaginable violence and a significant amount of deaths caused by mass public shooters. The targets of the mass shootings have been places that have a gun-free zone sign posted on the wall. In 1995, the gun-free school zone act was passed which prohibited a person, with possession of a firearm, to step foot on school grounds. This act would allow certain people to be exempt from the gun-free school zone, which includes retired law enforcement officers and a person licensed to carry a concealed weapon. This bill would keep a school relatively safe because it would mean a person that does not have a license to carry a concealed firearm would be charged with a felony.

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“Since “everyone else” is cheating, they have no choice but to do the same to remain competitive. And there is growing evidence many students take these habits with them to college.” (McCabe, Donald and Pavela). More and more colleges are using the honor codes. The honor code has helped to prevent cheating.

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Guns have no role in our country schools. Schools and colleges are places of education. Students should be free to learn in an environment away from every day violence. The catastrophes that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Columbine High School, and Virginia Tech. confirm the penetrating conclusion guns have in our nation’s schools. Violence on campus has Students, Parent, and University Staff all concerned and looking for preventative measures.

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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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