Opinion

Trump ‘plans to scrap’ Obama-era rule that turned schools into war zones

The Trump administration plans this summer to scrap a controversial Obama-era discipline rule forced on schools to close racial gaps in suspensions and arrests but that critics say pressures educators to turn a blind eye to escalating bad behavior.

The federal directive, issued jointly in 2014 by the US departments of Education and Justice, warned public school districts receiving federal funding — including New York City — that they could face investigation and funding cuts if they fail to reduce statistical “disparities” in discipline by race. On average, the administration noted, black students are suspended at three times the rate of their white peers.

The directive also discourages student arrests and holds districts liable for the actions of “school resource officers … or other law enforcement personnel.”





The one-size-fits-all federal policy, which recommends group counseling sessions and other alternatives to traditional discipline, has been foisted on several hundred school districts serving millions of students through investigations and threats of investigation that have continued into the Trump administration. More than 300 school districts remain under federal scrutiny, including NYC schools.

“The scope of it is breathtaking,” said Max Eden, an education policy expert and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

He says surveys show schools serving predominantly minority students have been hit hardest by the resulting breakdown in discipline, with violence and chaos mushrooming out of control in urban districts.

After Mayor de Blasio adopted the more lenient school-discipline standards in early 2015, including the recommended “restorative justice” counseling, “more schools saw fighting, disrespect, drugs, gang activity,” Eden said.





‘These policies are highly dangerous….They are turning our schools into war zones.’

While NYC school suspensions are down, crime has spiked in the city’s public schools, including major crimes such as robbery and arson, new NYPD data show. The current academic year has seen the first school murder in more than 20 years — a stabbing at a Bronx high school — and the first time a gun was fired inside a school in more than 15 years. What’s more, new state Education Department data reveal there were more rapes and other sex crimes at NYC public schools during the 2017-2018 school year than any year since 2007.

Studies show that more than 50 other urban school districts across the country have seen similar flare-ups in violent behavior since softening their discipline codes. Large shares of teachers now say they feel unsafe, as more and more students physically attack faculty and staff, according to school-climate and teacher surveys from dozens of districts, including Buffalo, Syracuse, Philadelphia and Denver.





Last week, a delegation of parents, teachers, students, police and at least one school board member from Baltimore shared horror stories with US Education Department staffers about how the federal guidelines have handcuffed administrators and police from disciplining violent bullies.

“These policies are highly dangerous,” said one of the parents, Nicole Landers, who has three children in the Baltimore system. “They are turning our schools into war zones.”

Recent high school shootings have thrust school safety and discipline further into the spotlight. Teachers and parents have pushed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to repeal the rule, while Democrats and civil-rights groups paint efforts to take away the regulation, which they call “a critical tool” for protecting African-American students from discrimination, as racist.

“Rescinding the guidance would send the message that the department does not care that schools are discriminating against children of color by disproportionately kicking them out of school,” the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said last week in a letter to DeVos signed by 145 other civil-rights and liberal organizations.





DeVos has met with both critics and supporters of the guidance. A senior department official tells The Post the Obama-era rule is under review and staff level discussions are taking place, but, the official says, “the issue hasn’t made it to the Secretary’s desk and no final decisions have been made.” DeVos has not said publicly if she will rescind it, other than to say, “We are studying that rule.” But she has rolled back several other Obama regulations and has hired staff lawyers who oppose the lax discipline policy, while cutting $1 million from the budget of the civil-rights office that enforces it.

Federal Education Department officials told the Post the guidance, known as the “2014 Dear Colleague letter,” will be rescinded this year, but only after drafting another rule to replace it. The substitute guidance will make it clear that the government will no longer rely on the disputed legal theory known as “disparate impact,” which Obama investigators used to threaten school districts with discrimination charges.

“Just withdrawing the letter without replacing it with another letter interpreting disparate impact more narrowly would do little” to convince school officials to change their discipline policies back, a senior department official said.

Putting out a new rule requires publicly inviting people from both sides to offer input, the official added, and the process will likely delay the repeal until July.

He and other sources say Attorney General Jeff Sessions is on board the decision to scrap the Obama rule. President Trump earlier this month appointed Sessions to a school-safety commission chaired by DeVos to consider, among other things, “the repeal of the Obama administration’s ‘Rethink School Discipline’ policies.”

Paul Sperry is a former Hoover Institution media fellow and author of several books, including “Infiltration” and “The Great American Bank Robbery.”





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