Why this tale of two outcomes? Well, while I didn’t get involved in the drug trade because I had some slightly greater measure of familial support and supervision, that doesn’t mean I didn’t break the law. I trespassed, I shoplifted, I smoked weed, I started drinking alcohol at fourteen, blew curfew, did some petty vandalism. My crimes were more mundane, less likely to arouse police intervention. The hood isn’t a hopeless place, but the obstacles that you can face there vary wildly based on mundane factors like whether there’s a cop in your school or if you have family who will show up for you early and often.
Every time I got out of line, I did so with the certain knowledge that not only did I need to be sneaky to avoid outside repercussions, but I also needed to stay within the line my grandparents and other relatives set. It was easier to do because I never had to worry about who was going to pay the bills. Or that if something happened to whichever family member I lived with, I would have nowhere to go. When my mother couldn’t take care of me, I lived with aunts, my grandparents, or family friends. When my grandfather died during my adolescence, I was living with my mother and stepfather. When my parents and I couldn’t get along during my junior and senior years, I could go to a friend’s house, back to my grandmother’s, or to an aunt’s. We all had complicated family dynamics, with parents who were struggling and sometimes failing. Deon had no meaningful adult support and had to be the adult for his sister, LaToya had some support but not always enough, and I had what I needed even if it wasn’t always what I wanted.
For all of us, having school staff that cared and a neighborhood that tried to make a difference meant that we could at least imagine a future even when it felt like it was impossible to get there. Deon’s story is the saddest for obvious reasons, but as sad as it is, he lived longer than a kid like him would today. Today, he’d be at risk of being shot by police for being a twelve-year-old in a public place with something that might look like a gun. Or he’d have been in handcuffs in school or bludgeoned by a resource officer. In the days before zero-tolerance policies, he was always able to find a safe place at school even if he didn’t have one at home. Harsher school policies in the wake of desegregation, and safety practices that include bringing law enforcement into schools have combined to create the school-to-prison pipeline, in which troubled students are subject not just to detention, but to suspensions, expulsion, and even in-school arrests. Instead of counseling or intervention services, schools are increasingly using law enforcement tactics to deal with misbehavior, even for minor incidents.
For the youth who are pushed out of school and into the juvenile criminal justice systems, their futures are more likely to look like Deon’s than like mine or LaToya’s. This is a feminist and racial justice crisis because the students being pushed out are not only disproportionately students of color, they are increasingly female. Many are also students with disabilities, and that number includes LGBTQIA students as well. Bias doesn’t stop at the school door, and the reasons marginalized students are being disproportionately impacted by these policies have more to do with identities than behavior.
Although the idea of zero-tolerance school discipline policies comes from the “tough-on-crime” policies of the 1980s and 1990s, its impact wasn’t as severe then, because students were at least likely to be taught by staff who knew them and their families, staff who recognized their fundamental humanity. A lack of teacher diversity combined with unstable school systems, as well as charters that frame a military- or prison-style disciplinary system as the key to student success, can’t help but jeopardize student achievement as well as safety. Especially when they are the only options left after dozens of public schools have been closed. When you can be forced out of class for having the wrong colors on your shoes (à la the rules in several charter schools around the country), the adults around you teach you that they value obedience over education. And if they don’t value you or your future, then why should you?
The most common form of teacher discrimination manifests in classroom expectations and disciplinary referrals. A biased teacher may end up punishing a particular student more harshly and more often because of the student’s identity. They may refuse to use preferred pronouns, write classroom policies that interfere with student access to bathroom facilities, or otherwise create arbitrary standards that guarantee a student will somehow run afoul of the rules. This is especially common for Black and Latinx students in high schools. At sixteen, my oldest child was almost written up his junior year for trespassing by a teacher with whom he had several personality conflicts. The trespassing? He sat in an empty classroom to study before a test. The test was in that classroom. It wasn’t his actual teacher who threatened to write him up; his teacher had no problem with it.
The teacher threatening the write-up was likely more interested in control than anything else, but my oldest is smart, challenging, and underwhelmed by petty power displays. There was no real rule against his being in the room, and the door was open, but as far as this teacher was concerned, my son had been caught and deserved punishment. When I asked (as you do) what exactly would warrant a write-up, given how often kids who wanted a quiet place to study did exactly what my son had done, the teacher backed down, claiming he was trying to teach my son some discipline. But since my son was studying, that excuse fell flat. Other ways discrimination from teachers can be seen range from unfair grading to acceptance or encouragement of discriminatory behavior from other students in the classroom.
Missing from discussions of bullying issues in schools is the fact that at least some teachers will be aware of what’s happening and will ignore it. As a result, a marginalized student with limited emotional resources may find themselves feeling attacked from all sides. And the problem doesn’t stop there. Students who attempt to report discriminatory behavior to the administration may find themselves facing yet another bad actor.
And of course, there’s the fact that teachers can also be bullies and use their power over marginalized students in ways that may drive a student out of their classroom, if not out of school altogether. When marginalized students are targeted by teachers, they must contend with feelings of shame and powerlessness. They struggle with establishing other positive relationships within the school. In a 2007 study of students in an alternative school setting, students reported that an adult, rather than a peer, was involved in their worst school experience, with more than 80 percent reporting that they had been physically or psychologically harmed by a teacher. Teacher bullying can also have a contagious effect, indicating to students that the bullying of a particular individual is acceptable and making that individual vulnerable to more abuse. Only recently has teacher bullying of students been identified as a contributing factor to poor outcomes, and while there are studies in progress, there are no hard numbers on how often it is happening.
Perhaps the most distressing aspect of bullying behavior in teachers is how easily it can be explained away by adults who become complicit because they are projecting their own biases onto their students. Parents may know about the behavior through student complaints but think there is nothing they can do except remove their child from that school, because school officials fail to act when it is first reported. Bigoted teachers can even mask their mistreatment of students as part of a legitimate strategy for encouraging achievement. Because of narratives that cite discipline as a reason for achievement gaps, teachers can simply point to the lower grades caused by their own misconduct to justify their actions. When confronted, offenders may minimize or deny the conduct and claim it was a miscommunication. Ignoring the problem of teacher bullying only compounds it. Because inaction supports a hostile environment that undermines learning, parents may find themselves having to combat it in multiple ways. That may mean doing more drop-ins during the school day if possible, having a child carry a recorder or a cell phone, going to the administration, or having to go to the media.