I just got off a conference call with a group of kick-ass organizers who are planning the National Week of Action against School Pushout (October 11-17) under the auspices of the Dignity in Schools Campaign.

One of the primary reasons that I care about the issue of school pushout phenomenon is because of its connection to future incarceration.

Exclusionary disciplinary policies increase a child’s likelihood of involvement with the juvenile or criminal justice system. Young people who drop out of high school, many of whom have experienced suspension or expulsion, are more than eight times as likely to be incarcerated as those who graduate. One study found that 80 percent of youth incarcerated in a state facility had been suspended and 50 percent had been expelled from school prior to incarceration.

The following are some other critical facts about the phenomenon of School Pushout:

School pushout occurs from kindergarten through high school and results from numerous factors that prevent or discourage young people from remaining on track to complete their education. Many schools over-rely on zero-tolerance practices and punitive measures such as suspensions and expulsions. Schools are suspending and expelling students at a rate more than double that of 1974. In 2006, more than 3.3 million students were suspended out-of-school at least once and 102,000 were expelled. In the four years between 2002 and 2006, out of school suspensions increased by 250,000 and expulsions by 15 percent.

The majority of suspensions are for minor misbehavior, including “disruptive behavior,” “insubordination,” or school fights, which can be interpreted in subjective and biased ways, even unintentionally. Even the most severe disciplinary sanctions such as suspension for the remainder of the school year and transfer to a disciplinary alternative school are applied to minor incidents. During the 2007-2008 school year, the most common reason for serious disciplinary actions in U.S. schools was “insubordination” (43% of all actions).

Exclusionary practices even target our youngest students. In fact, the expulsion rate for preschool students is more than three times that for K-12 students. Too many schools cede disciplinary authority to law enforcement or security personnel and over-rely on law enforcement tactics to control school discipline. More and more school districts use police officers or “school resource officers” not trained for educational environments to patrol school campuses and discipline students. Between 1999 and 2005, the number of students reporting the presence of law enforcement officers in their school rose from by 14 percent.

School-based arrests have also increased dramatically. As with other exclusionary practices, the majority of such arrests are for minor incidents such as “disturbance of the peace” or “disruptive conduct.” High school students have been arrested for food fights, writing on a desk or breaking a pencil. In the most extreme cases, five year olds have been handcuffed and arrested for throwing temper tantrums.

African-American students are 3.5 times more likely, Latino students twice as likely and American Indian students 1.5 times more likely to be expelled than white students. In addition, African-American students are nearly 3 times more likely, Latino students 1.5 times more likely and American Indian students 1.1 times more likely to be suspended than white students. Students with disabilities are suspended and expelled at a rate roughly twice that of their non-disabled peers. Students in foster care are over three times as likely as their peers to be suspended or expelled from school. Studies show that between one- and two-thirds of foster care youth drop out of high school or fail to graduate on time.

OK now back to the issue of being punished for hair issues… Death & Taxes has a short article called Hair Wars: Public Schools Take Aim at Dreadlocks, Long Hair, Individuality. Here is just a short excerpt from the article about a new story that I didn’t know about.

16-year-old Vicksburg, Mississippi teen, Patrick Richardson, was astonished last week when his principal told him he couldn’t escort one of his high school homecoming maidens’ to the dance because of his dreadlocks.

Hurt and offended, Richardson came forward, and told his local news station, WLBT, “When I decided to grow my hair that’s what I wanted to do. I thought it was acceptable, but from what the principal told me, homecoming is of a higher standard and dreads are just not acceptable.”

Vicksburg School system’s superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Swinford said that while there’s no explicit rule forbidding dreadlocks on the homecoming court, the ban is part of the school’s “practice,” WLBT reports.