Despite Progress, Racial Equity In The Classroom Is Still Elusive

Plenty of research has shown that children of color are more likely to enter the legal system after being disciplined at school.

That's especially true for those who are suspended long-term or sent to juvenile court.

But it's not the only way race plays into a child's educational experience.

A new set of report cards from the Youth Justice Center, a project of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, takes a look at how each school district in North Carolina is doing when it comes to racial equity.

Youth Justice Center Director Peggy Nicholson says the state, and the Triad, have a long way to go.

Interview Highlights

On how North Carolina as a whole is handling racial equity in schools:

There's huge disproportionality across the state. Every district in North Carolina is slightly different in terms of which students they serve. So you have to look at each district in isolation. But without a doubt, the one trend that crops up in every district is you are seeing students of color – black students, Hispanic students, multiracial students – not having the same opportunities academically and also receiving more suspensions and court referrals.

So in each district, it might look a little different, but in the state as a whole, black students are over four times more likely to be suspended than white students. White students are over two times more likely to be considered "college and career ready" in elementary and middle school than black students. And that's just a trend we've seen over the past three years of doing these report cards and breaking down the data this way.

On how Triad school districts compare:

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County and Guilford County Schools are some of the largest districts in the state. They're relatively diverse demographically. In both districts the rates of short-term suspension for black students are drastically higher than the rates for white students.

I will say that Guilford has had more success in decreasing their number of short term suspensions than Winston-Salem. And in Winston-Salem we've also seen a larger percentage of juvenile court complaints coming from the schools. So I think especially in Winston-Salem/Forsyth there really needs to be some attention paid to the impact of suspension and school policing on black students because those numbers have gone up.

On basic steps that districts can take to improve equity in school:

I've seen school districts, starting with the Board of Education, make sure that within their policies they are highlighting equity. Some districts even have a board policy on equity. They have created offices of equity and and empowered people in those offices to provide training and resources at the school level to make sure that that implicit biases and other factors are causing disproportionate outcomes in classrooms and in discipline.

Teachers are also able to take this data and just kind of use it as a touchstone for starting conversations in their school or even just looking at their classroom practices to see how they might be contributing and if there's additional training that they need or resources they need to address trends they might see that are troubling in their classroom or their school. So I think there are actions that can be taken at every level. And I know many schools and educators are undertaking this work because they do see it as a problem.

(Ed.: This transcription has been lightly edited for clarity.)