Nashville to tackle racial 'discipline gap' in schools

NASHVILLE — Numbers tell a story in Nashville that's in urban school districts across the nation — a pattern of vastly more suspensions and expulsions among students of color, particularly black boys, than among their peers.

Educators call it a "discipline gap," and the disparity has continued to challenge the nation's biggest cities 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education upended a public school system that subscribed to "separate but equal."

Now, convinced that solving that gap is fundamental to ever bridge the gulf between academic outcomes, school officials here have begun creating a plan to tackle a problem that's proven unbending year after year.

Seven of 10 students who received out-of-school suspension in Nashville schools last year were black, even though blacks represent less than half of the district's population. Blacks accounted for 76% of all expulsions, up from 69% the year before.

More jarring: One of every 5 black Metro students last year received either an expulsion or suspension — a figure nearly three times that of their white classmates. The rate also is higher than average among Latino students.

The district has partnered with the nonprofit Oasis Center, a service center for at-risk youth, in what is being billed as a comprehensive communitywide effort to identify a model, one that involves experts in spheres ranging from mental health and community outreach to law enforcement.

Talks began in February after Nashville and three other cities — Chicago, Los Angeles and New York — joined a new initiative known as PASSAGE, which stands for Positive & Safe Schools Advancing Greater Equity. The cities plan to share best practices and research on improving racial and disciplinary disparities.

"My expectation is we'll do work that can have an impact nationwide over the next few years," said Jesse Register, Nashville's director of schools, adding that the hope is to identify both the societal trends that might contribute to the discipline gap and ways the district itself might contribute.

"It's not turning your back on behavior problems — that's exactly what it is not," he said. "It's solving problems that are really community problems, cultural problems. It's school systems taking a look at what they do as systems."

PASSAGE is supported by Atlantic Philanthropies and by Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, where Register worked as an adviser before his 2009 arrival in Nashville.

Those piloting PASSAGE have already combed through the data over the past five months. With plans to break off into six committees to explore different areas, the focus now is to create a model that addresses both ends of the equation: support for youth early on and a fair and equitable response system when students make mistakes.

The latter could include recommending changes to the student-parent code of conduct handbook as well as the link between the justice and schools systems. Work could take a year and a half.

"No one's interested in placing blame," Oasis Center CEO Tom Ward said. "We have lots of shortcomings as a society. That's not what we're going to spend our time on. What we're going to spend our time on is what we can do differently to get different results. We have to figure out what that is."

The beginning stages of PASSAGE coincide with news on Monday that Nashville was one of 60 urban school districts that has joined President Barack Obama's My Brother's Keeper initiative to take on "opportunity gaps" that black and Latino boys face.

Nashville public schools have committed to several Obama administration strategies, including expanding prekindergarten access, installing earlier warning signs to prevent grade retention, boosting access to rigorous coursework such as Advanced Placement and reducing suspensions and expulsions.

"It's really a 'whole school' approach," Tony Majors, the district's assistant superintendent of student services, said of PASSAGE, describing a plan that would involve students, teachers, principals and the community.