DOJ Rules on School Discipline

For John, BLUF:  Children need to learn self-discipline at home, before school begins.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Daily Caller is all up tight about the US Department of Justice ruling that punishment in K-12 has to be administered evenly across racial and ethnic lines.

Schools also violate Federal law when they evenhandedly implement facially neutral policies and practices that, although not adopted with the intent to discriminate, nonetheless have an unjustified effect of discriminating against students on the basis of race.

Examples of policies that can raise disparate impact concerns include policies that impose mandatory suspension, expulsion, or citation (e.g., ticketing or other fines or summonses) upon any student who commits a specified offense — such as being tardy to class, being in possession of a cellular phone, being found insubordinate, acting out, or not wearing the proper school uniform.

This is from a letter released this Wednesday last.

Does this mean that if your racial or ethnic group is behaving better than other groups, say in terms of being tardy to class or using a cell phone in class, your group needs additional punishment to even thing out?

I don't know.  It might work.  It does seem to fly in the face of arguments that say a well run classroom is necessary for learning to take place, but an experiment of several years along this line may not be out of the question.  If classroom disruption goes up we can always pull back this rule.  Csn't we?

The thing is, if you go to Sidwell Friends School, you and your parents won't have to worry about this kind of thing.

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff