Do Zero Tolerance Policies Work?

With stories of kids being  suspended for chewing a toaster pastry into a shape of a gun, shaping their fingers into guns on the playground, and even wrestling a loaded gun away from someone who intended to kill another student, the zero tolerance debate has flared up again.

This time people other than student rights advocates, ardent libertarians and armchair pundits have been getting in on the action. In Tennessee, a bill has been introduced that would exempt students from zero tolerance consequences if they were acting in self defense or defense of someone else. Some have expressed trepidation that it will encourage fighting. Others, including many victims of bullying and their parents, have praised the proposed change saying that self defense is a human right.

In Maryland a State representative has introduced a bill that would address administrators overreacting to innocent child behavior.

These assaults on long held zero tolerance policies are largely unprecedented, especially so soon on the heels of Newtown. However, to understand why these bills are coming up, one must first understand the reason zero tolerance policies came about to begin with.

Many attribute them to the Columbine Massacre. However the rise of these policies came about much earlier. Throughout the 80's and early 90's, many minority rights  groups were protesting that school administrators were singling out minority and poor students for harsher punishments for the same offense that a white student committed. Which was true to an extent. School boards responded by instituting zero tolerance policies that mandated that students get punished the exact same way regardless of intent in hopes that removing discretion would remove the inequalities and personal biases when it comes to school discipline. Has the idea worked?

Judging by the statistics, the answer seems to be "no."

Many researchers have found that overzealous zero tolerance policies affect minority and poor students the most. According to researchers at the University of South Florida minorities are disproportionately affected by zero tolerance and it contributes significantly to the "school to prison pipeline."

And there's a significant possibility that zero tolerance policies are being abused by teachers and administrators to get rid of students they don't like. Think about it. With all the paperwork it takes to suspend a student, it's kind of hard to believe that a teacher/administrator would want to take time out of their day to deal with  kids playing cops and robbers going "bang bang" on the playground. Unless they have another motive. If you want to get rid of some kids dragging down your class' test scores down or just get rid of a kid  you don't like,  finding a reason to get him thrown out under overzealous zero tolerance policies  doesn't take much effort. School officials are just as human as everyone else and a policy that allows them to say "my hands are tied no matter what" and "we just can't tell you the full story" is certainly a great smokescreen to give parents and the public respectively.

What about bullying? Rules that say both sides must be punished for being in a fight even if one side was defending him/herself or even if one side doesn't lift a finger is tantamount to victim blaming. In all cases, the prospect of being punished for being a victim makes them more scared to step forward. This only serves to help bullies. Victim blaming only served to make adult victims more afraid to come forward. Isn't it amazing supposedly educated people, with master's degrees even, think it's different for kids?

Drugs? If they'd only focus on actual narcotics, sure. But then you have kids getting stripped searched for allegedly having aspirin, a girl getting expelled for having Motrin to ease her period, or even suspending a kid with asthma for having an inhaler.

Defenders say things like "Zero tolerance is all we have to combat violence and drugs." They're wrong. They have brains. It doesn't take a big one to look at the security camera to see that the kid getting pounced on by four or five gang members is not the person to blame in a fight. You don't need a master's degree to know that the asthmatic with an inhaler is not trying to get high. You don't need to be Stephen Hawking to know that a Pop-Tart isn't a gun.

In the face of all the evidence it fails at everything it attempted to do. It was supposed to keep racial biases from interfering with discipline. Instead it puts more students of color than ever on the school to prison pipeline for minor or even non-existent infractions and gives people with biases a great smokescreen. It was supposed to keep kids safe. Instead it silences victimized children by blaming them for being beaten to a pulp (while at the same time harassing kids for eating Pop-Tarts, clearly a higher priority for educators).