Students Should Be Removed from School If They Inhibit the Learning Environment

Orderliness in the classroom is a prerequisite for learning.

Even the most open, child-centered, collaborative pedagogy requires schoolchildren to communicate calmly, respect their peers and take direction from their teachers.

Reformers have linked school suspension to “mass incarceration,” and claim that schools function as racist institutions that funnel young, nonwhite males into jails and prisons.

School suspension, according to this argument, inhibits educational development, pathologizes behavior that is considered harmless when performed by white students, and leads inexorably to increased dropout rates.

We often hear that “students who are disciplined by schools are also more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system,” or similar statements implying a causative link between school suspension and future criminal justice involvement.

But critics are just confusing cause and effect here....

Read the entire piece here at New York Daily News

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Seth Barron is associate edtior of City Journal and project director of the Manhattan Institute’s NYC Initiative.

This piece originally appeared in New York Daily News