President Obama’s November report on Women and Girls of Color was an important step, inviting attention to reduce the barriers confronting them on the path to college and careers. On February 11, a panel of experts will gather on Capitol Hill to discuss the issue with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Yvette D. Clarke. Following these examples, it’s time to give some attention to the unique obstacles these girls and women face.
Girls of color, and African American girls in particular, face many of the same challenges as boys inside the classroom, including huge differences compared to white students in the frequency and manner in which they’re disciplined. But they also face unique obstacles that until recently have drawn little attention. We need to understand these obstacles more clearly if we hope to find answers to surmount them.
Overall, we know from the latest federal data that black students are suspended at three times the rate of their white counterparts. We also know this disparity is not caused by black students engaging in more serious misbehavior, but rather by black students being punished more harshly for the same misbehavior as whites.
What’s received less attention in these statistics, however, is that black girls are suspended at a higher rate—12 percent—than girls of any other race or ethnicity and most boys. The rate for white girls is just 2 percent.
So what’s different for black girls? A brand new report concludes they are “pushed out, overpoliced and underprotected.” Why?
We have learned there are discipline alternatives. A recent brief by the Discipline Disparities Research-to-Practice Collaborative, consisting of 26 nationally recognized experts from the social science, education and legal fields, recommends examining data on school discipline by race, gender, age, reason for suspension and the educators involved, and then using the data to inform frank conversations about what is happening to groups of children and why.
One solution could be restorative justice programs, which encourage students to take responsibility for their actions and make amends for injurious behavior, thereby creating a safer and more positive environment for everyone in the school building. Other alternatives include collaborative problem-solving in schools, social/emotional learning programs, and improving teachers’ skills in classroom management and developing positive relationships with students.
But can these alternatives be made even more effective by applying a gender lens? That is, by using them to look specifically at the dynamics for girls? Might a restorative “circle” of students be used to detect challenges that girls are experiencing and to hear their ideas for how schools could better support them? Would girls of color benefit when educators and school security officers receive sexual harassment training and also learn the warning signs of trauma or abuse?
We believe we know those answers, but there is too little research and practice to back us up. Reports and studies rarely break out data for girls of color and when they do, they often frame their needs in terms of their relationship to boys and men—as sisters, mothers, wives and daughters—rather than as individuals in their own right who face unique challenges and opportunities.
Putting all children on the path to success requires understanding that they don’t all start in the same place. We must develop customized approaches that address the particular circumstances of different populations. We haven’t done that yet, and girls of color—especially black girls—are worse off for it.
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