Biden Discipline Policy a Black Eye to Educational Opportunity

A new “equity” initiative – a retread of old, discarded Obama Administration guidelines, actually – will “judge student punishments by quantity rather than context.” This means that “[m]ere numerical race disparities become de facto discrimination.”

In a Washington Examiner commentary, Project 21 Co-Chairman Stacy Washington notes that this “puts teachers in a tenuous position.” As she explains:

Under this proposal, discipline means disparity, and disparity means discrimination. That’s what teachers and administrators want to avoid.

And this imperils the teachers unions – a key segment of President Biden’s constituency:

While American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten pushes a social justice agenda embracing critical race theory, she must also have the backs of members who will be judged by metrics portraying them as vicious racists. A union’s first obligation is protecting members who pay their dues. Weingarten risks becoming, as the woke folk say, “literally Hitler.”

What’s worse – and most important – is that using disparate-impact statistics to judge school discipline policies “will also spoil educational opportunities for innocent children.” Stacy explains what will logically happen:

It essentially sets up racial quotas on how many members of a particular minority can receive appropriate punishment at a given school. This creates a death spiral for quality of life among large minority student bodies. When students are less likely to receive punishment for their misbehavior, students around them are affected.

“Teachers shouldn’t be judged by statistics, and students deserve better classrooms,” Stacy points out. “That’s why the disparate-impact domination of discipline deserves a failing grade.”

The commentary is based on the public comment about this proposed Biden policy that Project 21 submitted to the U.S. Department of Education in July.

To read all of Stacy’s commentary – “Biden’s Equity Agenda Will Make Schools Less Safe” – and learn more about her school choice solution to academic discipline problems, click here to visit the Washington Examiner website.



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