Pubdate: Mon, 02 May 2005
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2005 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author:  Roger Guffey
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

POVERTY, NOT RACE, CAUSE OF DISCIPLINE DISPARITY

Like Explosives, Statistics Should Be Kept Out Of The Hands Of The
Unqualified.

Unfortunately, user-friendly statistical packages now let anyone take
a data set and crunch a few numbers to reach a misleading and
inflammatory conclusion. The user understands neither the difference
between correlation and causation nor the critical distinctions
between independent and dependent distributions that may account for
the results.

So it was when the Herald-Leader recently stirred the Fayette County
schools' black-white disciplinary pot in an article about the Kentucky
Center for School Safety's 2004 report and the so-called racial
disparity in discipline rates.

The report's obvious shortcoming is that it does not take repeat
offenders into account. For instance, this school year the Lafayette
High School staff has written 2,271 referrals to the office for
offenses ranging from skipping class to fighting.

The 157 students who accumulated five or more referrals accounted for
70 percent of the total, and the 103 repeaters who receive free or
reduced lunch (the poverty indicator) accounted for 48 percent. Thus,
5.6 percent of the student body accounted for nearly 50 percent of all
referrals.

Sorting the data by race reveals a second flaw in the report: Minority
students are disproportionately represented in the poverty category:
12 percent of whites, 66 percent of blacks and 91 percent of Latinos.
Given this underlying mitigating factor, attributing differences in
disciplinary rates to race is ludicrous. The real culprit is poverty.

Of the repeat offenders, 30 whites, 42 blacks and 33 Hispanics were on
free-reduced lunch, while 35 whites, 13 blacks, and four Hispanics
were not. Within their respective peer groups, the percentage of poor
white students referred to the office is about 4.5, the same
percentage as poor black students.

Any teacher can tell you that money will not fix the problem when
students suffer a poverty of hope as much as poverty of finance.

Children learn more than 90 percent of what they will ever know before
first grade. They learn to talk and walk -- and they learn not to hope
or dream.

Today's breakdown of families, which forces women and children into
poverty, can be traced to several factors:

. Divorce and illegitimacy: In 1947, women headed 3,410,000 households
in America. The number reached 12.9 million in 2000. As sociologists
know, children in households headed by women suffer if for no other
reason than women are paid less than men for the same work.

Out-of-wedlock births climbed from 7.7 percent in 1965 to 33 percent
in 1999. The 1999 rate for whites was 22 percent, with 69 percent for
blacks and 44 percent for Hispanics.

Children born out of wedlock are in poorer health overall, are more
likely to fail a grade, are seven times more likely to be poor than
their counterparts and are far more likely to marry in their teens and
have children out of wedlock.

. Drugs and incarceration: Patterns of drug abuse and incarceration
mirror the family trends dramatically. The incarceration rate was
fairly stable from 1925 to 1975, at about 110 prisoners per 100,000
population. Between 1975 and 2000, the rate jumped to 500 prisoners
per 100,000. The overwhelming reason for this increase is drugs.

The incarceration rate for black males is more than five times the
rate for white males, greatly diminishing the chances of a successful
two-parent black family. Even if parents who are drug users manage to
avoid jail, their habits drive the family into poverty, often
accompanied by abuse.

. AIDS: This fatal disease and its devastating effects on families
have exacerbated the other destructive forces. Even when AIDS does not
kill its host quickly, the cost of medicine is so exorbitant that a
family must choose between medication or food and clothes. In the
black community, where AIDS is rampant, far too many children wind up
in foster care and acquire the problems associated with having no
permanency in their lives.

All these sources of poverty are based on the narcissistic viewpoint
expressed in the common parlance of the day: It's all about me.

The sexually promiscuous, the drug user or pusher, the unfaithful
spouse all think that their actions take place in a vacuum, that they
don't affect anyone else. Today's poverty, unlike that at the turn of
the last century, could be decreased if more people assumed
responsibility for their actions.

Isn't that what we are trying to teach children by applying discipline
standards in school? That actions have consequences, and we will be
held accountable when we break the rules?

The behavior of children of any race won't improve until adults'
behavior does.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin