AP: Ferguson and Floyd Effects somehow failed to make black students behave better

If the Great Awokening were really over, we might see less ludicrous coverage of education statistics by the AP wire service.

From the Associated Press:

Black students are still kicked out of school at higher rates despite reforms

By ANNIE MA and CHEYANNE MUMPHREY

Updated 7:45 AM PDT, August 30, 2024

… In Georgia, Black students like Byrd make up slightly more than one-third of the population. But they account for the majority of students who receive punishments that remove them from the classroom, including suspension, expulsion and being transferred to an alternative school.

Those disparities, in Georgia and across the country, became the target of a newly energized reform movement a decade ago, spurred by the same racial reckoning that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. For many advocates, students and educators, pursuing racial justice meant addressing disparate outcomes for Black youth that begin in the classroom, often through harsh discipline and underinvestment in low-income schools.

The past decade has seen some progress in lowering suspension rates for Black students.

Are blacks behaving better over the last decade relative to other races? Crime statistics suggest not.

But massive disparities persist, according to a review of discipline data in key states by The Associated Press.

In Missouri, for example, an AP analysis found Black students served 46% of all days in suspension in the 2013-2014 school year — the year Michael Brown was shot and killed by police in that state, days after he completed high school. Nine years later, the percentage had dropped to 36%, according to state data obtained via a public records request. Both numbers far exceed Black students’ share of the student population, about 15%.

Ever since Black Lives Matter emerged at Ferguson in 2014, Missouri has had one of the highest black homicide victimization rates in the country. Here’s the homicide victimization rate per 100,000 for Missouri residents age 6 to 22 from 1999 to 2023:

In 2023, young blacks in Missouri were 27 times per capita as likely as young whites to die by homicide.

Are we really supposed to believe that black students in Missouri started behaving better during the Ferguson Effect and the Floyd Effect? Or, more likely, did school administrators get terrified of being Darren Wilsoned out of their careers, so they’ve relaxed discipline, with the usual bad consequences for black behavior?

… The country’s racial reckoning elevated the concept of the “school-to-prison pipeline” — the notion that being kicked out of school, or dropping out, increases the chance of arrest and imprisonment years later. School systems made incremental progress in reducing suspensions and expulsions, but advocates say the underlying bias and structures remain in place.

The upshot: More Black kids are still being kicked out of school.

“That obviously fuels the school-to-prison pipeline,” said Terry Landry Jr., Louisiana policy director at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “If you’re not in school, then what are you doing?”

Not beating up your classmates? Not keeping them from learning?

Students who are suspended, expelled or otherwise kicked out of the classroom are more likely to be suspended again.

It’s almost as if multiple observers are coming to the same conclusion.

… Federal guidelines to address racial disparities in school discipline first came from President Barack Obama’s administration in 2014. Federal officials urged schools not to suspend, expel or refer students to law enforcement except as a last resort, and encouraged restorative justice practices that did not push students out of the classroom. …

In Minnesota, the share of expulsions and out-of-school suspensions going to Black students dropped from 40% in 2018 to 32% four years later — still nearly three times Black students’ share of the overall population.

Blacks students in Minnesota behaved better in 2022 than 2018? Really?

The discipline gulf in that state was so egregious that in 2017 the Minnesota Department of Human Rights ordered dozens of districts and charter schools to submit to legal settlements over their discipline practices, especially for Black and Native American students. In these districts, the department found, almost 80% of disciplinary consequences issued for subjective reasons, like “disruptive behavior,” were going to students of color.

Who could possibly imagine that white children in Minnesota tend to be well-behaved? As everybody knows, all the children in Lake Wobegon are below average.

Education reform emerged quickly as a goal for the Black Lives Matter movement. …

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.