Over the last several years, the federal government has been pushing school districts across the country to dial back disciplinary policies under which children are suspended for minor misbehavior that once would have been dealt with in a meeting with parents or though minor sanctions like detention. These “zero tolerance” policies make it more likely that children will drop out, and they are especially damaging to minority students, who are disproportionately subjected to suspension, expulsion or even arrest for nonviolent offenses. Now, colleges that penalize applicants for high school disciplinary records should change their policies as well.
The problem is underscored in an alarming new study by the Center for Community Alternatives, a nonprofit group that focuses on alternatives to incarceration. The study traces the problem to questions on the Common Application, which is used by some 500 colleges and universities. The applicant is asked about his or her disciplinary history, and the high school is asked whether the applicant committed disciplinary violations from ninth grade on that led to probation, suspension, removal, dismissal or expulsion.
During the 1990s, schools began as a matter of course to criminalize adolescent misbehavior — reclassifying mere shoving matches as acts of “extreme” violence and throwing students out for cursing. The notion of penalizing college applicants for minor misbehavior when they were 14 or 15, when a child’s impulse control is notoriously weak, is unfair on its face. It is even less defensible when you consider that suspension policies are applied arbitrarily and in a racially discriminatory way. “Disruptive behavior” often means talking back to a teacher. And in some places, weapons possession is seen as “not at all violent” while shoving matches are viewed as “extremely violent.” Depending on where a student lives, firecrackers or toy guns can get the student suspended for “weapons possession.”
Colleges that use the disciplinary information in admissions often make matters worse by doing so haphazardly. According to the study, only about a quarter of the 408 colleges that responded to the survey have formal written policies on how the data should be interpreted — and only about a third have trained their admissions staff in how to interpret disciplinary violations. These shortcomings mean that at least some students can be unnecessarily rejected for innocuous violations. And those who are admitted despite violations can be barred from living on campus, placed on probation and so on.
Disciplinary data is junk information that can hurt students while doing nothing to meaningfully distinguish them from other applicants. Clearly, many schools realize that. About half the 1,360 high schools that answered the survey had chosen not to disclose the information. Of course, this means applicants from districts that do share the information can be penalized merely because of where they live.
Given the inherent unfairness of this system, school districts should adopt a policy of withholding disciplinary information, and colleges should refrain from using any such information in admissions decisions.
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