I was at a workshop today sponsored by Savannah-Chatham County's Exceptional Child Dept. that addressed the thorny issue of ethnic disproportionality in the district's suspended/expelled students--specifically the special education population. Disproportionality is what happens when a higher percentage of one ethnic group is identified as special education, suspended, or expelled than what the system's ethnic breakdown is. Our system is about 65% African-American, 25% white, and the rest Hispanic, multi-racial, or Asian. With that ethnic breakdown, suspended/expelled special ed students (and all students in general) should, according to federal regulations, match a school district's ethnic breakdown.
Our system? Not so much. Right now, the number of students at Scott Alternative (which houses the system's expelled students) is running 89.6% African-American with 58.7% of all expulsions being African-American boys. All told, 65% of all expelled students in Savannah-Chatham County are boys.
The Feds and the State of Georgia aren't all that interested in why this is, they just assume that these numbers are due to inappropriate practices, policies, and procedures by the school system and require that a system that is disproportionate to provide Early Intervening Services.
And that was the substance of the workshop--putting into place a team at every school that would collect the behavior data and would create and implement school-wide discipline plan and activities to reduce our district's disproportionality. As I sat there though, I took a look at some of the disproportionality right there in that room:
123 educational professionals
87.8% females
12.19% males
If you haven't noticed lately, boys are having a tough go of it in school these days and the research shows it:
"Female teachers perceived female students more positively regardless of teachers' race. White female teachers perceived White students more positively the same way that they perceived White male students more positively than Black male students, but Black female teachers made no distinction."
So my thought experiment goes something like this--put the 15 or so males at this workshop together (instead of separated by school) and have them work through the five Ga DOE modules and come up with an Early Intervention Service plan, then compare it to what the 108 or so females come up with. I bet they are different. Markedly different. In our system, which isn't so different from the state of Georgia, we have a disproportionate amount of female teachers (as compared to male teachers) who are playing their part in the suspension/expulsion of a disproportionate amount of males, particularly African-American males, who are then charged with creating and implementing school-wide plans to reduce this disproportionality without really examining how the disproportionate amount of females in classrooms impacts the disproportionate amount of boys (particularly African-American boys) suspended, expelled, and placed into special education.
Until this disproportionality is looked at, boys will likely continue to struggle--proportionately, of course.
5 comments:
Seems the math may be wrong. The equation should tally the percentage of African American boys expelled out of their totals vs. Caucasian and other boys in regards to their totals. May get a more equally based conclusion there.
As for gender, historically boys always roughed up more often than girls. Other than your tom-girl who was most likely to be suspended than a prissy missy.
Not sure why that is, but SC's experimenting with segregating classes of girls from boys is turning out some positive results.
Appears that girls just being present tends to make the boys misbehave more so.
Show offs. ;)
Either way, as long as girls tend to behave and get good grades wouldn't it be safe to assume that they'd grow up, go to college and become school teachers? Guys, well they tend to stick with gender based careers or one up on the working gals, managing them.
Such as you Mr. Principal. =0)
The Feds and State need to assume the numbers could also be do to social and economic factors. Single parents, income scales and family size just for a few examples.
Although SCCPSS does offer classes and initiatives to educate parents on educating their children - you know the turn out rate there. As I am sure you've also heard the excuses.
The main problem with special ed. in Savannah is that there is they do not indentify students with EBD. They think everything can be done in the classroom with their SST forms. An inclusion teacher is forced to manage all kinds of behaviors and keep data not leaving them with much time to help the kids with a learning disability. That is a fact- I taught so many conduct disorders, severe ADHD, Bi-polar, and other kids in desperate need of therapeutic support, and there is none. No real therapeutic support, where I am at now EBD kids have 100 minutes of individual counseling a week. I challenge them to come up north and see a functioning running therapeutic day school instead of full inclusion that has had master benchmark studies done in the city of London and the state of Florida that states it does not work. I did the best I could when working for SCCPS, but I see much better work being done where I am currently at. If they had just 3 therapeutic day schools, every school would run better. Morale amongst teachers would be better, and the behaviors (most of them copycat)- would be less and less.
How about this? How about introducing the concept into the black community that a good education is more important than looking like a gang banging rapper? If all these kids see idealized are the pimps and "gangsta's", why would anyone with a brain expect them to want to do well in school?
Caserok: I agree with you in all regards. I taught at a special needs school in Corbin City, South Jersey. It was designed for kids of all grades and ages who had behavior and learning disabilities. The programs and system were so successful that we saw many children return to be integrated back into the normal district schools after a year or two.
The regular schools continued to support them in individual counseling and extra programs but on a limited basis. Mainly to evaluate the student and to reinforce the positive teachings that they received at Corbin. Rarely did a student return. A few stayed at Corbin permanently but this was mainly due to a higher degree of learning and social irregularities.
I still keep and touch and hear from many of my students today and they are all doing exceptionally well in adulthood. SCCPS needs such a school and program.
Case & Margie--Excellent comments and a really intriguing comment about therapeutical models. There is no doubt that the inclusion model mainstreams SpEd kids into regular classrooms with teachers with little (make that very little) therapeutical background. Inclusion teachers are heavy on strategies for the classroom but very light on therapy which is really the only sucessful way to approach EBD students in combination with meds.
But, still, in my opinion, lots of kids get tagged as behavior problems by their female teachers for being little more than boys.
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