Youth from Seattle Young People's Project came out in force last month to launch our new Education Justice Campaign, which targets the drastic racial disparities in school discipline rates in Seattle schools. With a quiet and peaceful display of signs, youth members caught the eye of everyone at the Seattle School Board meeting, and drew attention to our cause.
I am proud to work at Seattle Young People's Project (SYPP), a youth-led, adult-supported, social change organization that empowers young people to express themselves and take action on the issues that affect their lives. In past years, youth members have organized campaigns against sexual harassment in school hallways, military recruitment on school campuses and the WASL test. Now, after a three-month process of community surveys and youth-led decision-making, members have decided to focus on the discipline gap in Seattle schools.
A look at the data shows why this is such a critical issue. In 2010, the Seattle School District reported an on-time graduation rate of 66.7 percent. This dissatisfying statistic hides yet another terrible number -- only 48 percent of African-American, Latino and Native American youth are graduating. This phenomenon of disproportionate graduation rates is widely known as the "achievement gap." As the Washington State School Directors' Association puts it, "Economic status, race and culture should not be predictors of academic achievement." Yet it's an undeniable fact that our schools are not serving all of our youth equally.
At the root of the achievement gap is a school system that repeatedly uses a tangled set of harmful approaches, including a misguided focus on testing, faltering and lukewarm stances on training around cultural competency and social justice issues, misplaced funding priorities and a culture of "zero tolerance" school discipline policies -- which is where SYPP is focusing our energies in 2011.
Zero tolerance policies, subjective enforcement of rules and police in schools have contributed to the racially disproportionate rates of suspensions and expulsions that directly reflect our skewed graduation rates. These policies, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, "contribute to a socially devastating cycle called the 'school-to-prison pipeline' whereby students are expelled from school and find their way onto the streets and ultimately into the juvenile justice -- and later adult criminal justice -- system."
The school-to-prison pipeline is a tangible reality in our community; it is a systemic conduit that tracks marginalized youth out of the school system and into cycles of poverty and incarceration. According to the Seattle School District's own data, African-American youth receive short-term suspensions at a rate that is nine times higher than white youth at the elementary school (K-5) level and two-and-a-half times higher than white youth at the high school level. This directly feeds into Seattle's disproportionate high school push-out rates. With 40 percent of youth of color in Seattle not graduating from high school, they are three-and-a-half times more likely to be arrested than their counterparts with diplomas.
Two years ago, the City of Seattle attempted -- and failed, thanks to local organizing -- to build a new municipal jail at the same time the Seattle School District closed down 11 schools serving primarily youth of color and low-income youth. On the streets, in the last year, several videos have gained national attention revealing Seattle police officers and King County sheriffs subjecting youth of color to intense violence. This is the face of the school-to-prison pipeline in King County.
At SYPP, we've seen the impacts of this problem firsthand, as youth members have been expelled over minor infractions, their siblings and friends face racial profiling by their teachers, and those who are not currently enrolled in school find themselves with few positive options. In the spring of 2010, we also saw the problem come up repeatedly in our participatory research program, "Say It! Storytelling as Organizing," as 15 youth researchers listened to the stories of their peers who face harsh punishments and police officers in their classrooms. We believe that suspension and expulsion are ineffective responses to discipline problems, setting students further behind, and increasing the likelihood they will drop out or enter the juvenile justice system.
Within our Education Justice Campaign, we are demanding clearer, more consistent and transparent data from the school district. We want at least one school to pilot a discipline policy based on transformative justice -- which involves students, staff and the community resolving problems without suspensions, expulsions or police on campus. Our campaign has already received the endorsement of the Race and Social Justice Community Roundtable, whose members include over 25 well-respected community organizations and individuals.
With budget cuts, youth at Seattle Young People's Project recognize that these are tough times to be making demands on the school system. A campaign poem that the youth wrote states, "When the budget gets cut, we know that racial justice is the first to go," and "Year after year we remain undefended; now we are watching funding get ended, and our pathway to jail just gets more extended."
Not if we can help it.