Zero Tolerance Unfairly Targets Minority Middle School Students

The safety of students is a primary concern in schools today. This encompasses safety from people on the outside and the inside of the school, including safety from other students. Ronald Reagan put forth the zero tolerance policy to punish people involved in drugs. In order to bring increased safety to schools, the zero tolerance policy began to spread its influence in education, starting with implementing gun-free schools (Walker, 2009). Since Columbine, zero tolerance policies have grown to punish students who are in possession of a firearm/weapon/anything that resembles a weapon, possession of drugs, possession of alcohol, creating or initiating

Zero tolerance policies arose during the late 1980’s in response to a rising tide of juvenile arrests for violent offenses and the expanding view of youth as dangerous. During this time discipline in educational settings became much more formal and rigid. Discretion was removed from teachers and administrative staff in favor of broadly instituted policies, which often involved law enforcement and arrest. In 1994 Congress passed the Gun-Free Schools Act, which forced states to pass laws mandating expulsion for a minimum of one year for bringing a weapon to school in order to receive federal education funds. By the mid 90’s roughly 80% of schools had adopted zero tolerance policies beyond the federal requirements and in response the federal government began to increase funding for security guards and other school based law enforcement officers and equipment. These changes occurred primarily between 1996 and 2008 and mirrored changes in the juvenile justice system to more closely emulate the adult system.

Zero tolerance started as a way to keep guns out of schools until the staff at school started to use it as a way to report and punish non serious offences (Heitzeg, 2009).

The school-to-prison pipeline in the United States is a figure of speech used to describe the increasing patterns of interaction students have with the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems as a consequence of procedures used by many school systems. A specific procedure would be the zero tolerance policies and the use of officers in schools. Currently in today’s American schools many children of color are being unfairly judged and treated by the public school systems zero tolerance policies. Zero tolerance policies have been implemented in schools in the last 20 years that include inserting school resource officers in schools and cracking down on all behavior that any authority figure may deem as a form of bad behavior. The policy is based upon deterring future misbehavior and is central to the philosophy of zero tolerance, and the effect of any punishment on future behavior is what defines effective punishment (Skinner, 1953). Zero tolerance policies causes the school environment to feel more like a prison and ultimately leads to black and Latinos being judged and guided to the prison system. A zero-tolerance policy orders predetermined penalties or punishments for specific wrongdoings.

With the creation of the zero tolerance policy, it changed the way student are being disciplined. In the 1990’s, in fear of the increasing crime rate, The United States Congress created a law that allowed public schools to enforce strict disciplinary policies for misbehaving students (Mental Health America). The zero tolerance policy states: “[the policy] mandates predetermined consequences or punishments for specific offenses that are intended to be applied regardless of the seriousness of the behavior, mitigating circumstances, or situational context”

Zero Tolerance Policies grew momentum after the Columbine school shooting in 1999. The Columbine school shooting was when two students went on a shooting rampage, injuring 24, and killing 13 students and school faculty including themselves at their school. Before the Columbine incident, In 1994, federal legislation passed a law that required any school to expel students who carried or were found in possession of a gun while on school grounds or they would lose federal funding. Zero tolerance policy in

Sometimes, the SROs programs have negative impacts on student’s life. Before, student misconduct was held by the teachers, but now it is controlled by the law enforcement in school (Beger 2002). For example, “five students were suspended and charged with crime for tossing peanuts at each other on a school bus” (Beger 2002:123). Schools have accepted the strict and high-security measures to protect students, but would result in diminishing the rights of students (Beger 2002). Students are searched without suspicion, especially the minority communities (Beger 2002). The unreasonable searches diminish the rights of students, which protect them from unreasonable search under the Charter of Rights and Freedom. It is clear that police in schools may impact negatively if the police officers conduct an unreasonable search based on class, racism, and gender. The result of zero tolerance in school leads more students’ school-to-prison pipeline, which results in more youth in prison. The zero-tolerance policy accepted in school to expel any students who involved in any illegal or misconduct behavior (Beger 2002). However, if the students feel that the police in schools and rules of school are fair and just, then eventually students will follow the rules and provide safer school surroundings (Beger 2002:127). Because the main reason of SRO is to prevent the drug issue, violence, shooting, threat, and maintaining law in school.

The zero tolerance policy has become a national controversy in regards to the solid proven facts that it criminalizes children and seems to catch kids who have no intention of doing harm. Although, there has been substantial evidence to prove that the policies enforced in many schools have gone far beyond the extreme to convict children of their wrongdoing. The punishments for the act of misconduct have reached a devastating high, and have pointed students in the wrong direction. Despite the opinions of administrators and parents, as well as evidence that zero tolerance policies have deterred violence in many public and private schools, the rules of conviction and punishment are unreasonable and should be modified.

It should be understood by parents, educators, and school administration that punitive based discipline generally does not improve behavior, learning, or safety. In zero tolerance school districts, one of the most common approaches results in the suspension or expulsion of the students as the automatic tool against emotional behavioral disorders and other discipline and behavioral issues. Some of these approaches may be the best outcome, especially with regard to drug or weapons possession by the student. However, they have been increasingly used as a response to actions or behaviors which do not threaten either the safety or

The zero tolerance policy has no place in the school system because it has damaged students academically by being directly related to the dropout rate, discriminating against the minority groups, and stripping away students right to privacy and speech. As shown in this article, many students have been affected by this policy. The zero tolerance policy neglects to address the students who are struggling in school. If a student is suspended from school, their is a likely chance he or she will not receive academic help after the fact. This may cause students to become unmotivated and dropout. Furthermore, many of the other complaints about this policy is it is unfair to the minority groups and the students with learning disabilities because they

The zero tolerance policies can be best described as, “a philosophy or policy that mandates the application of predetermined consequences, most often severe in nature, that are intended to be applied regardless of the seriousness of behavior, mitigating circumstances or situational context (Graham et al 2008 np)”. There was a rise of the zero tolerance policies that started with the scare of the war on drugs during the 1980s. There was this fear of copious amounts of drugs coming into the schools along with the perceived rise of gang violence occurring in schools. This happened alongside the boom in weapons coming to US, this prompted the federal government to act. Schools in some states started to adopt the language of zero tolerance, which

Zero-Tolerance doesn’t make students feel safe. In fact, it makes them afraid. Thus, it teaches them about the

Racial disparities in school discipline have garnered recent attention in national reports issued by the U.S. Department of Education and Justice (U.S. Department of Education, 2014; Gregory, Hafen, Ruzek, Mikami, Allen, & Pianta, 2016). Suspension rates Black students are two to three times higher than those from other racial and ethnic groups. Various research has documented that Black students remain overrepresented in school discipline sanctions after accounting for their achievement, socioeconomic status, and teacher- and self-reported behavior (Gregory et al, 2016). There is a difference as to the reasons why White students are sent to the office versus Black students. Black students are sent to the office for subjective reasons such as “disrespect” and “perceived threat”, while White students are more than likely to be referred for more objective reasons including, smoking, vandalism, and leaving school without permission. (Gregory, et al, 2016). African Americans and especially African American boys, are more likely to be disciplined and often receive more out-of-school suspensions and expulsions than white students (Todd Rudd, 2014). Suspending students is taking away time from them being in the classroom. Students who receive suspensions, lose instructional time, fall behind on course work, become discouraged, and ultimately drop out…recent research has shown each suspension a student receives can decrease their odds for high graduation by any

Once clearly defined, enforcing the zero tolerance policies can be relatively easy for the offenses related to illegal drugs and alcohol. These are serious threats to school safety and using common sense when applying the policies against such offenses should help. Violence on the other hand is more difficult to define at schools because it can take many forms. Under the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, in order for school

"Zero tolerance" policies are the new theme in fighting weapons and drugs in schools. These policies behind the pressure of President Clinton have been enacted in 47 states. The idea is to encourage states to get tough on youth that threaten their own safety and the safety of others. Some of the more popular measures with these policies include installing metal detectors at school entrances, the use of armed security guards to patrol and monitor students, and the automatic removal of students who break rules regarding weapons and drugs. According to the Department of Education, school districts that have enacted these policies are showing improvements in these areas. For example, Dade county public school officials seized only 110 guns in the past year from 193 the previous year after enacting a zero tolerance policy.