For fewer suspensions, address the disruptions
Brooklyn: Re “Black & Brown kids belong in school” (op-ed, Dec. 22): I taught math in junior high school for 20 years and am now retired. I had many wonderful students who made teaching a joy for me. I also had disruptive students who made the 43 minutes I had with their class hell. I remember how difficult it was to remove disruptive students from class. We were instructed to keep anecdotal records of their bad behavior. Only after their record was long enough and all other disciplinary measures had failed were these kids suspended for a week. The process took time. Meanwhile, I and the good kids had to suffer continued disruption (often a daily occurrence) of our lessons.
All the suspended kids were Black or Hispanic, yet there was no racial injustice there — our school was 99.9% Black and Hispanic. The real injustice was that it was so difficult to get the disruptive kids out of the class so the rest of the kids could learn! Unfortunately, a disruptive kid would return to class when the suspension was up and continued to disrupt, and the cycle continued. When a student had been suspended a few times and was judged to be incorrigible, he could be transferred to a special school that was equipped with services that might help him. Our school was not equipped.
Articles in the Daily News by well-meaning people who don’t really know what they are talking about (in this case, what goes on day-today in our schools) create misinformation. Correlations in statistics can mislead. In the case of this op-ed, they sure did.