'Too loud. Too assertive. Too defiant': New education guide tackles biases in how Black girls are treated at school

Kamilah Newton
Updated ·10 min read
3
Black girls are more likely to receive harsh punishment that their non-Black classmates. A new education guide seeks to remedy that with robust research. (Getty Images)
Black girls are more likely to receive harsh punishment that their non-Black classmates. A new education guide seeks to remedy that with robust research. (Getty Images)

This year, reports have shown that devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic overlaps with racial disparities within health care, housing, policing — and education is no different. When ProPublica Illinois broke the story of 15-year-old “Grace,” who was sent to a juvenile detention center because she failed to submit her online schoolwork, it prompted petitions, outrage on social media and protests in support of the young girl’s release. As of this month, her case was finally closed but not before spending 78 days imprisoned for what experts call a “subjective” offense.

Nationally, young Black girls like Grace are both more likely to be punished and receive harsher punishments than their white peers. Throughout the years, studies have shown that Black girls were seven times more likely to be suspended and over four times more likely to be arrested at school than white girls — and that even in preschool, despite Black girls composing just a fifth of the girls enrolled, they account for over half of girls’ suspensions. Studies have found that these educational inequities have little to do with differences in behavior but are instead a direct result of harmful policies and biases of the adults around them.

In response, the Education Trust, an organization promoting “social, emotional and academic development through an equity lens,” has collaborated with the National Women’s Law Center for the Aug. 20 release of a new guide — “…And They Cared”: How to Create Better, Safer Learning Environments for Girls of Color — providing parents, educators and other “decision makers” with tools that can be used to “create better, safer learning environments for girls of color.”

"And They Cared" is the new guide, released Thursday, by the Education Trust. (Education Trust)
"And They Cared" is the new guide, released Thursday, by the Education Trust. (Education Trust)

“Black girls face some of the greatest barriers to educational opportunities because of racial and gender biases embedded within school discipline policies, dress codes and codes of conduct that target their cultural identity,” Nicolle Grayson, director of communications for the Education Trust, tells Yahoo Life. “These biases manifest as punishments that have more to do with who these girls are rather than what they do.”

The guide is the result of research conducted in hopes that it will be used to “reform exclusionary discipline policies and improve school climate to help address the needs of girls of color,” because, as Grayson notes, “This is particularly timely.” In the past few weeks, she points out, “we’ve seen horrific headlines of a Florida elementary school student in handcuffs, students suspended from virtual learning and dress codes for at-home learning,” adding that “during the current uncertainty of a global pandemic and the beginning of a historic public reckoning on racism in the United States, school districts … must make intentional and specific policy and financial decisions to address the systemic anti-Blackness that is folded in our nation’s fabric.”

The publication offers a roundup of guidance born of data collected from directly from schools and students, including a vital glossary and a checklist to help ascertain privilege in a school’s rules.

What the research uncovered

Researchers Adaku Onyeka-Crawford and Kayla Patrick spoke with Yahoo Life about the importance of their findings, with Patrick explaining that the guide’s title, “…And They Cared,” is from a participant’s comment about educators. She says she felt it was imperative to not only highlight, but lead with it, because, in the policy analyst’s years of research, Black girls have often told her that they “just don’t feel like the educators charged with helping them to grow and learn really care about them. And that’s really important to them.”

Echoing that sentiment, Onyeka-Crawford, director of educational equity at the National Women’s Law Center, tells Yahoo Life, “What we wanted to do was to show that for too long Black girls aren’t thought about when we’re talking about school safety … [or] when we’re talking about how to create learning environments that just are better for all students. We took a look at some of the school districts … where policies seemed like they were working … and one of the girls said that people care about whether they were learning, felt safe and felt included in school.”

Furthermore, Patrick says that this simple guide is also important to help provide “a common language” to both students and the adults who are supposed to help them navigate the most formative years of their lives. She recalls that as early as the first grade, she would go home with complaints about things that were “not fair” at school. “Now, as a Black woman who does this work, I realized what I was trying to communicate was that I was actually experiencing racism and sexism in my classroom,” she says. “It’s really important that we engage students in this work, so that they know and have the language to communicate what’s happening to them,” rather than allow unfair school policies to “silence their identity within their culture.”

Across the country, many of these exclusionary rules (including but not limited to hair discrimination and dress codes) have made headlines after being called out for race and gender biases, but, as Patrick explains, “racism and sexism is baked into the code of conduct policies that end up sending the message to students — and particularly girls of color — that they actually don’t belong in schools.” She continues, “We are hoping that whether you are a parent, teacher or an advocate, you print out the policies that your school has around dress codes or suspensions and compare it to our checklist at the end of the guide to see if your policies are targeting Black girls.”

The new guide also highlights districts in Oakland, Calif., and Chicago as examples of those that have been proactive about creating better policy for marginalized students.

“In Oakland, they have school-based health centers that give students the support in health care to make sure that they have what they need to learn, so if you need glasses or dental care, you can get that from your school,” Patrick says. “Those things are really important for our communities that are most likely to be underserved.” Although the support is uncommon, the theory behind it is not unfamiliar — as, in 2016, a Baltimore-based program called “Vision to Learn” showed that providing students with free eyewear could boost their grades.

Patrick adds that “we’re on the cusp of potentially the biggest eviction crisis that we’ve ever seen, so one of the things we’re really concerned about is the increase of homelessness among students, and we want to make sure that they have the support they need, whether they’re physically in school buildings or distance learning.”

Still a long way to go

One of the most upsetting revelations, says Onyeka-Crawford, was “realizing that even the places where there are positive steps being made, there’s still so much work to do.” She notes that, although Chicago was praised in the report for its efforts in policy changes, the district is still “spending $33 million on school police during a pandemic where students aren’t even going to be in school.” Those funds, she says, could be better spent on “guidance counselors, school psychologists and nurses rather than folks who are in schools to arrest Black and brown girls. The amount of resources spent on criminalizing [these] girls knocked me off my feet.”

Onyeka-Crawford says that this problem aligns with calls to defund policing, saying that, “especially right now, when we’re talking about distance learning, that money would be better spent on a Wi-Fi hotspot or device — something to actually help students learn, instead of another officer. But racism doesn’t end just because there’s a pandemic, and this is one of the ways that it’s arising. I think that we really need to push schools and other officials to unpack some of these things that have become common practice in schools heavily attended by students of color.”

Additionally, Onyeka-Crawford says the need to reconsider the notion that “police only arrest bad guys,” explaining that not only have Black girls been arrested in school for minor infractions but that, within their findings, some girls reported being sexually harassed by officers on campus. She adds, “If you put a police officer at school, they’re going to find a way to use their authority to criminalize students. It’s not that Black girls misbehave more frequently. It’s that we are criminalizing common, childlike behavior.”

Patrick agrees, further explaining that many adults “don’t give [Black girls] a lot of space and opportunity just to be children” because of what’s known as adultification bias. As just one example, the researchers found that Black and brown girls are most likely to see themselves as leaders, but that something subjective — like being too inquisitive or too loud — could be met with punitive measures instead of encouragement. In 2017, a groundbreaking study by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality produced data “showing that adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers, especially in the age range of 5–14,” finding that many believed that Black girls required less nurturing, protection, comfort and support. It also found that Black girls are expected to be more independent and know more about adult topics — including sex.

Patrick says, “School should be a place where students feel safe and they have the opportunity to grow, but we know that things like suspensions, expulsions and arrest don’t really help students to grow at all.” The study points out that there are both short-term and long-term effects as a result being suspended from missing out on critical class time to the fact that students who “attend schools with higher rates of suspension are more likely to have future interaction with the criminal legal system.” On the flip side, it also highlights that “students who attend schools with lower suspension rates are less likely to interact with the prison system as adults and also more likely to attend a four-year college.”

Onyeka-Crawford says she remains hopeful that “school districts, school leaders and policymakers will start to listen to Black girls” because there is evidence to show that “reductions in exclusionary discipline, while incremental each year, show encouraging results when looked at over time.”

She adds: “If nothing is taken away from this report, we want folks to listen to Black, brown and indigenous girls when they say, ‘[More police] doesn’t make me feel safe. What makes me feel safe is having a caring adult in the building, knowing that I can talk through my issues with somebody and knowing that I can make mistakes without getting suspended or arrested.’ If you make school better for Black and brown girls, you make school better for everybody.”

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