Racial disparities persist in MPS
Little progress in suspensions, expulsions
Two years after Milwaukee Public Schools signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education to address its glaring racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions, data suggest little progress overall.
According to the district, African American students account for 81% of suspensions this school year, as of Feb. 4, and 80% of referrals for behavioral issues — though they represent just 51% of the student body.
MPS tallied almost 23,000 suspensions and expulsions last school year, about 2,700 more than it did in 2013-14, the year the Department of Education launched its probe, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of data provided by the district.
Black students accounted for 81.1% of all suspensions and expulsions last school year, down from 83.6% five years earlier.
And while incidents fell from 20,000 to 17,000 in the 2014-15 school year — the year after the investigation was opened — they have risen steadily since.
MPS Superintendent Keith Posley described the slight drop in the percentage of black students represented as progress.
But school board President Larry Miller said he remains deeply concerned about the rate at which black students are suspended and expelled.
“This is a fundamental issue of equity for our black students,” Miller said.
Similar misconduct, different discipline
In January 2018, MPS settled a complaint filed by the education department’s Office of Civil Rights alleging it discriminated against black students in suspensions and other disciplinary actions.
The investigation, launched in June 2014, uncovered more than 100 instances over a two-year period in which black students were punished more severely than their white peers for the same or similar misconduct.
Under the terms of the agreement, MPS was required to, among other things, improve its monitoring and data collection, better train staff, update its disciplinary policies and develop early identification and intervention strategies for students at risk for behavioral problems.
MPS said it has taken numerous steps to address concerns raised by federal officials.
Among them: It named a districtwide discipline manager, Jon Jagemann, to oversee its school culture, climate and discipline practices and policies.
Further, it increased training for teachers; beefed up its early-identification and intervention procedures; created student discipline committees at all middle and high schools; and launched a new pilot program at several schools aimed at eliciting student input on issues involving school climate and discipline.
But there have been some challenges in implementation. The 32 schoolbased discipline committees are supposed to meet monthly and report back to the district. But as many as half the committees don’t meet each month, or at least don’t send in their reports.
“The schools are meeting, but there have been issues in tracking them because of confusion or technical issues,” Jagemann said.
Marla Bronaugh, chief communications and school performance officer, stressed that the number of expulsions are down this year, compared with the same period a year ago.
“This is a process that takes time,” she said.
Influence of ‘social conditions’?
School board member Tony Baez said “social conditions” coupled with a disproportionately small number of teachers of color in MPS schools could be part of the problem.
“If a student is facing extreme poverty and racism where they live, it is likely that they are going to be angrier,” Baez said. “And that can cause them to act in ways that endanger themselves and those around them.”
Baez said teachers of color might have more “cultural competence” in dealing with those students.
“When white teachers work with students of color, sometimes the cultural difference is too much,” Baez said.
MPS administrators updated board members on discipline data at the Feb. 11 meeting of the board’s committee on Parent and Community Engagement. Board members asked for additional information before the full board meeting Feb. 27, but then did not bring the issue up for discussion that night.
Board President Miller said he would be bringing it back to the full board.
The data initially provided by the district to the Journal Sentinel cited much higher numbers of suspensions and expulsions in recent years. But it said the data was incorrectly pulled from its system, which causes some incidents to be reported more than once.
The settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, announced by then-Superintendent Darienne Driver, ended a 31⁄2-year investigation. Board members said at the time that they had no knowledge of the probe.