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It did not take long for school safety agents in New York to find their first gun of the new school year. Day 1 had barely begun at a Brooklyn high school last month when the officers stopped a 15-year-old student who had stowed a loaded .22-caliber pistol in his backpack and thought he could pass it through a metal scanner.

In short order, the boy was led away by the police. Also in short order, the city's Department of Education issued a statement invoking a two-word phrase that has virtually been holy writ in classrooms around the country for the past quarter of a century: "There is zero tolerance for weapons of any kind in schools."

It is hard to imagine many law-abiding citizens disagreeing that the acceptance level for students carrying guns, knives, drugs or other harmful items should be nonexistent. But the concept of zero tolerance has come to encompass such a broad range of disruptive actions that roughly three million schoolchildren are suspended each year, and several hundred thousand are arrested or given criminal citations. Many students are hauled off to police station houses for antisocial behavior that, a generation or two ago, would have sent them no farther than the principal's office.

Have get-tough policies gone too far? Predictably, opinions are divided. Nonetheless, as the accompanying video shows, the pendulum in some jurisdictions is swinging away from hard-nosed book-'em certitudes toward softer let's-try-to-reason-with-'em approaches.

It is a shift that was encouraged by Eric H. Holder Jr. toward the end of his tenure as attorney general. He figures prominently in a new offering from Retro Report, a series of video documentaries examining major news stories of the past and their lasting consequences. This report was prepared in collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative news organization based in Washington that has written a series of articles on harsh school discipline.

A central figure in the video is Joe Clark, who built a national reputation in the 1980s as the no-nonsense principal of violence-plagued Eastside High School in Paterson, N.J. (Some people may know him better for having been played by Morgan Freeman in the 1989 film " Lean on Me.") Patrolling the hallways with bullhorn and baseball bat in hand, Mr. Clark cast himself as the scourge of troublemakers, a Rambo making classrooms safe for pursuits like the works of Rimbaud.

In 1982, his first year, he expelled a reported 300 failing students, some of them well beyond normal school age, and went on to ban dozens more whom he described as "leeches, miscreants and hoodlums."

On his watch, test scores did improve. The gains were hardly breathtaking, though. Mr. Clark also ran afoul of the school board, which accused him of usurping its authority over expulsions. But many defended Mr. Clark for getting rid of disruptive students, among them a veteran teacher at Eastside who says in the video that "you can't educate unless you have order in your school."

As the 1980s yielded to the high-crime early '90s, "zero tolerance" became a mantra in school districts across the United States. "There was a real concern," Mr. Holder acknowledged to Retro Report, "that we were just losing control as a society."

It was an era of near-panic over violence by young people. Fears gave rise to the notion of a generation of " superpredators," a word that has resurfaced in the current political season, including last week's presidential debate. It was invoked in the '90s by, among others, Hillary Clinton, who now renounces its use.

And so, back then, suspensions and arrests began to soar. Local authorities were emboldened by the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, a federal law that required states receiving federal education money to expel for at least a year any student found bringing a weapon to class.

But the zero-tolerance net came to be thrown ever wider, ensnaring far more than gun toters, knife wielders and drug dealers. Infractions once deemed the province of school disciplinarians - tardiness, say, or mouthing off to a teacher - often made their way to police blotters. There were eyebrow-arching moments like the arrest of a 12-year-old girl for doodling on her desk with a green marker, of an autistic child who had kicked a trash can, of teenagers who got into fistfights (as teenagers have done probably since Neanderthal days).

To some degree, school administrators were like generals who go to battle relying on tactics from the last war. Zero tolerance kicked into high gear, and stayed there, after youth violence had already entered what would become a steep decline. Homicides involving juvenile offenders, for instance, peaked in 1994, Justice Department figures show. By 2014, their numbers had fallen by two-thirds. Even occasional mass murders in schools, horrifying as they are, have not materially altered the overall pattern of reduced mayhem.

It is not lost on researchers that students expelled, suspended or arrested on charges like disorderly conduct are disproportionately black and Latino, or disabled mentally or physically. In kindergarten to 12th grade, blacks were 3.8 times as likely as whites to receive out-of-school suspensions, according to the United States Department of Education. Youngsters in those grades with disabilities were more than twice as likely as others to be suspended.

Researchers talk about a " school-to-prison pipeline " that runs like this: Young people are suspended from classes for long stretches, or are handed over to the police. As a result, they become prime candidates for quitting school entirely. Dropping out, in turn, makes them less likely to find jobs and more likely to become part of the criminal class.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a sense that school systems and police departments went overboard has begun to take root. An outspoken critic is Steven C. Teske, the chief judge of juvenile court in Clayton County, Ga., just south of Atlanta. Teenagers, Judge Teske has cautioned, will be teenagers.

"Zero tolerance as a philosophy and approach is contrary to the nature of adolescent cognition," he told a Senate subcommittee in 2012. For all the arrests, suspensions and expulsions that he had observed, "school safety did not improve," he said. If anything, "the juvenile crime rate in the community significantly increased."

"These kids lost one of the greatest protective buffers against delinquency - school connectedness," the judge said.

To foster that connectedness, some schools are shunning harsh punishment in favor of talking things through with rule breakers. They are places like Furr High School in Houston. Its principal, Bertie Simmons, prefers consequences that are "academic," as with two students who forged a permission slip. Rather than being suspended or put on detention, they were required to write a paper about their offense.

"If you just treat people with kindness, it's far better than being so punitive," Ms. Simmons told Retro Report.

No public school system in the country is bigger than New York City's, with 1.1 million students. It, too, has moved away from harsh discipline as an automatic response. Suspensions in the second half of 2015 were down by one-third from the same period the year before.

At the same time, safety improved. Major crimes - like rape, felony assault, burglary and robbery - were reported at their lowest level since the police started tracking them in 1998.

For many months, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has even raised the possibility of removing metal detectors from some of the scores of school buildings where they are fixtures. Many students regard them as "intrusive and denigrating," a mayoral panel concluded last year.

But transforming talk into action has been slow. An episode like that of the boy caught trying to slip a gun into school last month is unlikely to dissuade school safety agents and others who insist that the scanners save lives.

Notwithstanding the need for continued vigilance against that sort of lawbreaking, Mr. Holder contends that broad changes are essential. "We have a connection between our school system and the criminal justice system that did not exist before and that I don't think should exist now," he said.

The video with this article is part of a documentary series presented by The New York Times. The video project was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report has a staff of 13 journalists and 10 contributors led by Kyra Darnton. It is a nonprofit video news organization that aims to provide a thoughtful counterweight to today's 24/7 news cycle. Previous episodes are at nytimes.com/retroreport. To suggest ideas for future reports, email retroreport@nytimes.com.
For breaking news and in-depth reporting, follow @NYTNational on Twitter.

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The Unintended Consequences of Taking a Hard Line on School Discipline

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It did not take long for school safety agents in New York to find their first gun of the new school year. Day 1 had barely begun at a Brooklyn high school last month when the officers stopped a 15-year-old student who had stowed a loaded .22-caliber pistol in his backpack and thought he could pass it through a metal scanner.

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How should a teacher help young students learn about "personal space"?

Not with masking tape and segregation, according to an outraged Brampton mother who was shocked by what she saw when she went to her six-year-old son Anelka's parent-teacher night recently at Brisdale Public School in Brampton.

"He sits at a round desk with three other children. His side of the desk was sectioned off in a pie-shape with masking tape. The second thing I noticed was tape used to make a box on the ground, and that was for my son." said Colene Edwards.

Anelka's mom says she was told by the long-term supply teacher that it was to teach her son about personal space. "She said he was getting into other kids personal space, and he was so big and tall and his arms are long, that he needed this box on the ground and the pie shape on his desk. I asked her 'Where do the other children play?' She said, 'They go around the classroom.' I said, 'Can they leave freely?' She said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Where does my son stay?' She said, 'He stays in the box.'"

Edwards says for weeks she noticed her son would keep his elbows tucked close to his sides when at home: "I would play around with him, and say, 'Let go of your arms,' and he wouldn't. I know why now, he had that pie shape on his desk and he wasn't supposed to go out that pie shape."

Almost from the first day of school Edwards says she had phone calls from the teacher about how "big and awkward" her son was.

"He's taller than most kids his age, about four-foot-two, and she said to me over and over again how big he was."

There had been at least one incident where his arm accidentally hit a child during a play session, but Edwards says: "He is not a child who beats up on other children. He is not a child that misbehaves. He is like any six year old boy, he gets excited sometimes."

Edwards is heartbroken that her son was singled out like this for some time. "To think that my son has been treated for weeks like this without me knowing. He never complained because to him it's the norm. The box is the norm. She had him convinced this is normal for him to be in this box."

Edwards complained to the principal, who she says was disturbed by what she told him. "The principal had no idea, no idea that this teacher was doing this."

Edwards reached out with her story after a CityNews investigation last week into the Peel Region School Boards action plan to enrich the education experience of black male students. "I couldn't believe the report you did. The students were older but the one thing they have in common with my son is they are black. We are not looking for special treatment, we just want to be treated fairly. Anelka is the only black student in his classroom and he was segregated from other students".

The Peel District School Board has completed an investigation. When asked if race was a factor, they said in a statement: "It was determined that this was specifically an issue related to communication with the family and the strategy used. Nothing further was found in the investigation"

Of the masking tape on the floor and desk, the board says: "This would not be a strategy the board would recommend. We want every student to feel safe, welcomed and included."

The board won't comment on whether the teacher has been disciplined, but Anelka has been transferred to another classroom.

"He's happy, but at the same time, he knows it's because of the "box situation" that he is no longer in her class and he is trying to adjust. He is in a new class with new children. "

The school says it has since removed the masking tape on the floor and the desk.

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School discipline controversy: A mother's disturbing discovery during parent teacher night - 680 NEWS

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How should a teacher help young students learn about "personal space"? Not with masking tape and segregation, according to an outraged Brampton mother who was shocked by what she saw when she went to her six-year-old son Anelka's parent-teacher night recently at Brisdale Public School in Brampton.

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CONCORD - It's Friday morning at Wren Avenue Elementary. And a vicious rumor has rippled through the recess of Alli Cornwall's fifth-grade class: A boy and girl, who shall remain nameless, according to the playground gossip mill, "like each other and are dating."

"And that's serious business in the fifth grade," said Principal Cynthia Goin. "If someone is accusing two students of liking each other, that's a dating rumor that could really take over. You have to squash that."

But instead of employing traditional methods of discipline in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District that might involve reprimands or warnings, Cornwall and others in her district are employing different methods. She gathers all of her students together in a circle to discuss the conflict. The roughly two dozen fifth-graders sit in what's referred to as "a restorative circle," and each takes a turn speaking with "talking stick" in hand to answer the big questions of the day: "What does bullying look like and sound like? And how can rumors hurt people?"

These restorative justice circles and other positive intervention and support systems are part of a new lexicon of redefining discipline and shaping appropriate behaviors in the classroom. The trend has been taking place all around the Bay Area and nation the past few years. From schools in San Jose Unified and East Side Union High School to Oakland and Hayward school districts, educators have been rethinking the traditional role of discipline in the classroom.

In its place they've turned to alternative discipline methods as well as building positive school cultures and reward systems in place of punitive measures, in an effort to build a greater sense of school community that encourages students to stay in the classroom and keep learning.

"Instead of coming up with a list of ways that kids can be punished for what they did wrong, we're looking for ways kids can be rewarded for what they did right," Goin said. "It's not that there aren't consequences, because sometimes you have to put a stop to things when they happen, but there's a lot more focus on the learning aspect of it. If you can give an attaboy or kudos, you often get so much more from students ... and I would say it's built a beautiful culture here."

The techniques have significantly improved the district's "equity gap" - the disproportionate rate of suspensions and expulsions of African-American and Latino students, said Lisa Murphy Oates, the administrator of the Mt. Diablo School District's Equity and Disproportionality Team, which started guiding this work about three years ago.

But the positive behavior intervention techniques made their debut five years ago at six schools, growing now to 28 of the district's 53 schools, she said. Using these techniques, these schools have cut their overall suspension rate from 8 percent to 5 percent at district schools over the past five years. Among elementary students, suspensions have gone down from 4 percent to 2 percent, for middle schoolers from 12 percent to 9 percent and for high schoolers from 15 percent to 10 percent.

Over the past five years expulsions of Hispanic students have gone from 22 to 8 students and for African-American students from 9 to 1, Oates said. By comparison, expulsions of white students have decreased from 10 to 9 per year.

At Wren Avenue, this emphasis on the positive starts as soon as you enter the campus's main entrance. Colorful signs and murals decorate the hallways that essentially "brand" the school with its community motto: "Be Safe. Be Respectful. Be Responsible."

Similarly, at Ygnacio Valley High School in Concord, signs can be seen throughout the campus reminding students of "The Warrior Way," which is to "Be Safe. Be Responsible. Have Integrity. And Build Community." The school takes those four values seriously and dedicates an entire week of activities around the messages at the beginning of the school year, said Corissa Stobing, a positive behavior intervention and support team member at the school.

Principals at both campuses are constantly looking for innovative ways to reward good behavior. At Wren Avenue, students and teachers can earn vouchers that are known as Chirps, Super Chirps and Good Goin' bucks. Anything from picking up trash to raising a quiet hand in class, rather than blurting out answers, can earn the most basic reward - a chirp. Students can earn colorful pencil topper erasers, soccer balls, art kits, modeling clay and even 10 extra minutes of recess or a pizza party with the principal, if they rack up enough virtuous deeds.

Similarly, at Ygnacio Valley, staff and students are showered with kudos in an elaborate Staff Member of the Month and Students of the Week program. Students can earn "High Five" pens, certificates and letters home, as well as trendy rubber wristbands if they espouse the school's values of "respect" and "integrity" or are selected for the "principal's list" or as "Warrior of the Week," explained Principal Efa Huckaby.

The school does an exceptional job of making sure that staff have real conversations with students before and between classes to show they care about their well-being outside of the classroom, Oates said.

Viviana Castro, 16, said she came back to Ygnacio in her junior year after attending another school.

At the other district, "all the teachers were just rude, and no one cared, honestly," she said. "I was new. And I was lost, and no one checked up on me. But here, they try to make people more comfortable and welcome. If we are falling behind on our stuff, they are on us 24-7, trying to make sure we have the help we need."

As a result, Ygnacio Valley's enrollment has swelled to 1,250, compared with two years ago when it was less than 950, Stobing said.

"It works," said English teacher Nicole Kipnis, who says she's seen how much more focused students are now that there's a calmer vibe to the school campus, with much less conflict than before.

"The more praise you give a student, the more willing they'll be to work for you, rather than put out their bad behavior," she said. "Catch them doing something good, and it goes a long way."

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Mt. Diablo schools officials: New ways of discipline working

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CONCORD - It's Friday morning at Wren Avenue Elementary. And a vicious rumor has rippled through the recess of Alli Cornwall's fifth-grade class: A boy and girl, who shall remain nameless, according to the playground gossip mill, "like each other and are dating." "And that's serious business in the fifth grade," said Principal Cynthia Goin.

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"We the adults need to figure out how to work with 3- and 4-year-olds who - through no fault of their own - are struggling to be successful," she said.

Seattle's model was one of more than a dozen early childhood education efforts from cities across the nation highlighted Wednesday at a summit organized by Early Matters Dallas, a coalition of local business, education and civic groups focused on pre-K issues.

Seattle's effort is of particular interest to Dallas as DISD considers whether it should ban suspensions of the district's youngest students.

Liang-Aguirre cautions that Seattle is still learning through this process, but what officials there do know is such an effort takes commitment, partnerships and money. Doing away with suspensions isn't simply setting policy.

The city hired discipline coaches to train teachers on social and emotional issues and to observe classrooms so that teachers received instant feedback in how to improve the environment. More parent conferences were sought. And Seattle partnered with public health and mental health officials to help identify when students might need additional resources.

Was there enough money and resources? No, Liang-Aguirre said. Ideally, each school would have a support network in place. But you have to make a commitment to change and start somewhere, she said.

"This was a social justice and education issue," she said.
Texas can do more to improve quality
When Gov. Greg Abbott made pre-K an emergency item of the last legislative session, early childhood education advocates were hopeful that a nationwide push to improve access and quality was taking hold in Texas.

Lawmakers ended up approving grants to help cover the cost of some full-day efforts and other improvements, but the bill fell short of addressing quality in a meaningful way, said Libby Doggett, deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, a speaker at the summit.

Improving pre-K, such as by limiting class size and requiring staffing ratios, would go a long way toward improving education across Texas, said Doggett, who lives in Austin. In fact, some Texas districts opted out of the new state grants because the funding wasn't secured enough for schools to make costly long-term investments in their programs.

But even as advocates push for more permanent funding and better quality, some Texas lawmakers are already questioning the state's investment so far.

So it is up to local leaders to push for solutions now, she said.

"That's why you see this amazing surge of cities meeting in Dallas now because we can't wait for the feds to act. We can't wait for the states," Doggett said. "Our kids are too important, and we can't afford to lose another generation."

During her opening remarks at the summit, Doggett said only 4 out of 10 eligible students are in some form of pre-K, not all of it quality.

One sure way to boost improvement would be attracting the highest quality teachers into the classroom, she said. But on average, many cities and districts don't treat pre-K teachers as equal to their peers in other grades. Many don't require a degree for such jobs.

"We're paying them more like parking attendants than teachers," she said. Closing that salary gap would help attract skilled professionals, she said.

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While some Dallas ISD schools kick out 4-year-olds, another city said no way

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"We the adults need to figure out how to work with 3- and 4-year-olds who - through no fault of their own - are struggling to be successful," she said.

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It was a warm evening at the end of July, and LeRon Barton was bar-hopping in Santa Monica, California, when his good night soon came to an ugly end. Barton, who is African-American, and three friends hailed an Uber cab. The driver asked unexpected questions: "Are you going to Vegas?" (They weren't.) "Do you have any bags?" (They didn't.) He then said his Toyota Avalon was too small for four passengers. (It wasn't.)

An altercation ensued when the driver said, "If you all want to find another driver, you can," followed by an expletive. He then drove off, leaving Barton and his friends without a ride. Was Barton unlucky or the victim of discrimination?

A new study published October 31 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a think tank in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attempts to answer that question. The study, based on an analysis of nearly 1,500 Uber and Lyft rides in Boston and Seattle, describes how African-Americans booking a trip on the popular ride services waited up to 35 percent longer and got more cancellations than white riders did. The highest wait times were experienced by men trying to book UberX, Uber's basic service, in sparsely populated areas in Boston. They also experienced the highest cancellation rates. While the findings may sound alarming, a closer look reveals that passengers, regardless of race, waited fewer than five minutes for a ride.

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However, the study suggests that African-Americans face discrimination-but only from some drivers. "It's important to emphasize that this is not Uber and Lyft discriminating against passengers-this is individual behavior," says Stephen Zoepf, executive director of Stanford's Center for Automotive Research and one of the researchers involved in the study.

Taxi drivers refusing to stop for certain passengers, or refusing to take them to particular neighborhoods, have provoked outrage for years. The authors of the new study say they are the first to find similar discrimination by Uber and Lyft drivers.

Both companies deny the discrimination charge and argue that their services help minority communities. "Because of Lyft, people living in underserved areas, which taxis have historically neglected, are now able to access convenient, affordable rides," says Adrian Durbin, who's in charge of policy communications at Lyft.
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"We believe Uber is helping reduce transportation iniquities across the board," says Rachel Holt, head of Uber's North American operations. "But studies like this one are helpful in thinking about how we can do even more."

Uber and Lyft carry as many as 19.4 million riders in the U.S. each month. Their popularity derives largely from their convenience and from fees that are often lower than cab fares. Passengers key in their desired destination using a smartphone app, which matches them with drivers in the area. Lyft drivers can see a passenger's name and profile picture before they decide to accept a ride. This information is available to Uber drivers only after they hit "accept." The apps are tied to credit card information, so travelers never have to fish around their wallets, making the ride an often seamless affair.

While these reinvented taxi services may have eliminated the need for cash, the new research suggests they've been less successful at stamping out discrimination. In Seattle, African-American travelers with Uber and Lyft had to wait longer for their trip requests to be accepted, although the difference, on average, was only a matter of seconds. When it came to wait times with these services, black passengers had to wait approximately 30 percent longer than their white counterparts. This discrimination was statistically significant only for UberX passengers, not those using Lyft.

Among some important findings: Researchers discovered that travelers in Boston with African-American-sounding names like Aisha, Darnell and Rasheed were twice as likely to have an UberX driver accept their ride request and later cancel it. It happened about 10 percent of the time with African-Americans, compared with half that for passengers with names like Allison, Brad and Todd. For African-American males trying to get a ride in sparsely populated areas of Boston, cancellations tripled.

The researchers based their conclusions on two separate, but related, experiments. In Seattle, a team of white and African-American research assistants spent six weeks requesting rides along predetermined routes in neighborhoods that varied by income level, geographic makeup and population density. A similar team in Boston did the same, except each research assistant requested rides using two different names: one that was "distinctively black" and the other more "white sounding." A total of 1,341 rides were made: 668 in UberX cars and 673 in Lyft cars.

"The question really is: Is this better than what we have now in terms of the conventional taxi system?" says Zoepf. If the measure is success in hailing cabs, the ride services are no better, the researchers say. Part of the experiment also involved hailing traditional taxis. White research assistants managed to get the first cab they hailed 60 percent of the time. African-American travelers succeeded only 20 percent of the time. "The one thing we're not claiming is that Uber and Lyft are better than the status quo," says Christopher Knittel, an economics professor at MIT and one of the paper's co-authors.

Zoepf says what's really needed to take the study and its findings one step further is for the ride-sourcing companies to analyze the "treasure trove" of internal data they have, such as information on driver characteristics, which areas the drivers choose to serve and how this affects wait times. "It really demands further study by folks who have access to the data directly," he says.

The study's authors have a few suggestions for Uber and Lyft. For example, they recommend using unique pass codes to identify drivers and passengers, rather than using their names and pictures. And they propose making it harder and more costly for drivers to cancel on riders. With policies such as those, Lyft and Uber drivers could be persuaded to treat African-American riders more fairly-and put the yellow cabs to shame.

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Black Uber and Lyft passengers face longer waits and higher cancellations than white riders

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It was a warm evening at the end of July, and LeRon Barton was bar-hopping in Santa Monica, California, when his good night soon came to an ugly end. Barton, who is African-American, and three friends hailed an Uber cab. The driver asked unexpected questions: "Are you going to Vegas?"

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Victory: North Carolina Legislators Won't Be Able to Suppress the Vote This Election

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A federal appeals court today struck down the entirety of North Carolina's voter suppression law in a sweeping victory for voting rights. The ruling blocks voter ID and restores preregistration, a week of early voting, same-day registration, and out-of-precinct provisional voting.

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"I cannot think of a better time in our nation's history for the brave names of Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi to be recognized. The courage heard in their voices mirrors some of history's greatest giants, with sharp echoes of Rosa Parks. Black Lives Matter is working to heal our country's age-long sickness. For when one is sick, so too are we all sick. Only when all is healed might we all one day be well." -Uzo Aduba, actress (Read Uzo Aduba's comments in full at the end of this piece.)
They were always worried about their brothers.

Patrisse Cullors was 13 when she watched Los Angeles police handcuff and haul away her older brother without knowing why it was happening.

Growing up in a Phoenix suburb, Opal Tometi, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, was alarmed when her youngest brother started preschool and began to raise questions about his hair and skin color-questions she knew were triggered by societal messages about race.

And Alicia Garza worried about her brother's safety every day-but never so much as after July 13, 2013, when George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida, was found not guilty in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. "My brother is six feet tall and has a huge Afro," Garza says, "and I thought, That could have been my family."

The night of the acquittal, all three women were devastated. But as they mourned, they turned their sorrow and outrage into action, creating a powerful civil rights movement that, in just three years, has transformed the way Americans think and talk about race. Garza and Cullors had met at a conference for activists nearly a decade earlier. ("We just fell in love instantly," recalls Garza. "We call each other 'Twin.'") The night of the verdict, they texted, sharing their grief. "When I woke up in the morning," says Garza, 35, who is the special projects director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in Oakland, California, "I wrote a love letter to black people." Her now-famous Facebook posts are a lament, an exhortation, and a praise song. "I continue to be surprised at how little black lives matter," she wrote. She ended with, "Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter."

Cullors, 33, a Los Angeles-based organizer and artist, shared the posts on Facebook, spontaneously finishing her own post with #BlackLivesMatter. Tometi, 32, the executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration in New York City, saw the hashtag and reached out to Garza, whom she knew from the activist community, and volunteered to build a digital platform.

"I felt a sense of urgency about the next steps we could take together to change the story," Tometi says.

Adds Garza: "We wanted to connect people who were already buzzing about all this stuff and get them to do something, not just retweet or like or share. We thought, How do we get folks together and take that energy and create something awesome?"

With that, #BlackLivesMatter-a rallying cry for a new generation-was born.

Given the facts of American history, it was all too predictable that Martin's would not be the last widely reported killing of an unarmed black person. And when a new case hit the headlines-the August 2014 death of Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Missouri, at the hands of a white police officer-Black Lives Matter roared into action to create a "freedom ride," so protesters from around the country could get to Ferguson. The three women also made a key decision: To keep their group decentralized. Today the Black Lives Matter Global Network is a coalition of 42 autonomous chapters, each doing its own work. The Chicago chapter, for example, helped oust the police superintendent after video footage of an officer shooting a black teenager was withheld for more than a year. In addition to protesting racism and unlawful killings, Black Lives Matter groups have taken on inequality, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

"We gave tongue to something that we all knew was happening," Tometi says. "We were courageous enough to call it what it was. But more than that, to offer an alternative. An aspirational message: Black lives matter."

Those local efforts have seeped into the national consciousness: Lady Gaga, Kerry Washington, and Jesse Williams all voiced support for the movement; in an essay for Wired, tennis great Serena Williams wrote, "To those of you involved in equality movements like Black Lives Matter, I say this: Keep it up."

In February, Beyoncé brought Black Lives Matter's issues into the nation's living rooms with her Super Bowl halftime performance. And in July, at the ESPY Awards, basketball stars LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Paul together movingly called for an end to racial violence.

There have been critics, of course, who have responded with #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter hashtags. But powerful voices have helped explain the issue: "When people say 'Black Lives Matter,' that doesn't mean blue lives don't matter. It just means all lives matter," President Obama said last summer. "But right now the big concern is the fact that the data shows black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents.... To be concerned about these issues is not political correctness. It's just being an American, and wanting to live up to our best and highest ideals."

The CEO of AT&T lent support; so did Ben & Jerry's with a letter to customers: "All lives do matter. But all lives will not matter until Black lives matter.... We'll be working hard on that, and ask you to as well."

Garza, Cullors, and Tometi are earning their place in history-notable, since too many black women have been little more than a footnote in civil rights textbooks. "They've brought the necessary 'street heat' to drive change and hold elected officials accountable," says Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). "This movement, largely driven by young people, is really the civil and human rights struggle of our time."

And while creating a movement is never easy-they've sacrificed family outings and weddings and relationships-all three say they find strength in one another.

"From my youngest brother to immigrant women to black queer folks, those are the people who keep me going," says Tometi. "When I think about their various acts of courage, it reminds me that I am not alone and that we can do even more and we deserve more, so we have to keep going.... We have built a sisterhood, a community. Friends and people who'd look out for you, who have your back, who inspire you but also challenge you. And you can rise together."
Collier Meyerson is a justice reporter at Fusion. Uzo Aduba on the founders of The Black Lives Matter Movement: I cannot think of a better time in our nation's history for the brave names of Alicia Garza, Patrice Cullors, and Opal Tometi, also understood as the founders of The Black Lives Matter Movement, to be known and recognized than during this year's Glamour Women of The Year. So often during a living history, a call to action is thought too monstrous an undertaking for its time, thought too great a cost on the lives of those called. These fears do not reside in the spirits of these women. The courage heard in their voices mirrors the size of some of history's greatest giants; the sharp echoes of Rosa Parks, the custodian of dignity, and the impassioned Jo Ann Robinson's insistent assembly of voices with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in her 1955 circular. The power of this lady-led legacy continue to ripple through today's Black Lives Matter Movement in the form of a simple cry breathing out: Enough is enough. These are the champions of our great nation. This movement does the hard work of advancing culture, challenging the underpinnings of our imperfect society's hardest truths, with the hope of conquering injustices where fit, sacrificing so much for the collective good of an all too often forgotten people, so that we might, indeed, one day form a more perfect union. Black Lives Matter matters. It is working to heal our country's age-long sickness. For when one is sick, so too are we all sick. Only when all is healed, might we all one day be well. And for that valiant attempt at healing, Alicia, Patrisse, and Opal must be recognized. What a time.

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Meet the Women Founders of Black Lives Matter

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"I cannot think of a better time in our nation's history for the brave names of Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi to be recognized. The courage heard in their voices mirrors some of history's greatest giants, with sharp echoes of Rosa Parks. Black Lives Matter is working to heal our country's age-long sickness.

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Imagine if, during the Jim Crow era, a newspaper offered advertisers the option of placing ads only in copies that went to white readers.

That's basically what Facebook is doing nowadays.

The ubiquitous social network not only allows advertisers to target users by their interests or background, it also gives advertisers the ability to exclude specific groups it calls "Ethnic Affinities." Ads that exclude people based on race, gender and other sensitive factors are prohibited by federal law in housing and employment.

Here is a screenshot of an ad we purchased in Facebook's housing categories via the company's advertising portal:

The ad we purchased was targeted to Facebook members who were house hunting and excluded anyone with an "affinity" for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people. ( Here's the ad itself.)

When we showed Facebook's racial exclusion options to a prominent civil rights lawyer John Relman, he gasped and said, "This is horrifying. This is massively illegal. This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find."

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it illegal "to make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin." Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also prohibits the "printing or publication of notices or advertisements indicating prohibited preference, limitation, specification or discrimination" in employment recruitment.

Facebook's business model is based on allowing advertisers to target specific groups - or, apparently to exclude specific groups - using huge reams of personal data the company has collected about its users. Facebook's microtargeting is particularly helpful for advertisers looking to reach niche audiences, such as swing-state voters concerned about climate change. ProPublica recently offered a tool allowing users to see how Facebook is categorizing them. We found nearly 50,000 unique categories in which Facebook places its users.

Facebook says its policies prohibit advertisers from using the targeting options for discrimination, harassment, disparagement or predatory advertising practices.

"We take a strong stand against advertisers misusing our platform: Our policies prohibit using our targeting options to discriminate, and they require compliance with the law," said Steve Satterfield, privacy and public policy manager at Facebook. "We take prompt enforcement action when we determine that ads violate our policies."

Satterfield said it's important for advertisers to have the ability to both include and exclude groups as they test how their marketing performs. For instance, he said, an advertiser "might run one campaign in English that excludes the Hispanic affinity group to see how well the campaign performs against running that ad campaign in Spanish. This is a common practice in the industry."

He said Facebook began offering the "Ethnic Affinity" categories within the past two years as part of a "multicultural advertising" effort.

Satterfield added that the "Ethnic Affinity" is not the same as race - which Facebook does not ask its members about. Facebook assigns members an "Ethnic Affinity" based on pages and posts they have liked or engaged with on Facebook.

When we asked why "Ethnic Affinity" was included in the "Demographics" category of its ad-targeting tool if it's not a representation of demographics, Facebook responded that it plans to move "Ethnic Affinity" to another section.

Breaking the Black Box

We live in an era of increasing automation. But as machines make more decisions for us, it is increasingly important to understand the algorithms that produce their judgments. See the series.

Machine Bias

We're investigating algorithmic injustice and the formulas that increasingly influence our lives. See all of our reporting.

Facebook declined to answer questions about why our housing-categories ad excluding minority groups was approved 15 minutes after we placed the order.

By comparison, consider the advertising controls that the New York Times has put in place to prevent discriminatory housing ads. After the newspaper was successfully sued under the Fair Housing Act in 1989, it agreed to review ads for potentially discriminatory content before accepting them for publication.

Steph Jespersen, the Times' director of advertising acceptability, said that the company's staff runs automated programs to make sure that ads that contain discriminatory phrases such as "whites only" and "no kids" are rejected.

The Times' automated program also highlights ads that contain potentially discriminatory code words such as "near churches" or "close to a country club." Humans then review those ads before they can be approved.

Jespersen said the Times also rejects housing ads that contain photographs of too many white people. The people in the ads must represent the diversity of the population of New York, and if they don't, he says he will call up the advertiser and ask them to submit an ad with a more diverse lineup of models.

But, Jespersen said, these days most advertisers know not to submit discriminatory ads: "I haven't seen an ad with 'whites only' for a long time."
Clarification, Oct. 28, 2016: We've updated the story to explain more clearly that the ad we bought was not for housing itself - it was placed in Facebook's housing categories.

Julia Angwin is a senior reporter at ProPublica. From 2000 to 2013, she was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she led a privacy investigative team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2011 and won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2010.

Terry is ProPublica's deputy editor, engagement. Prior to joining ProPublica, he led digital production and engagement at WDET 101.9 FM, NPR's affiliate in Detroit.

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Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users by Race - ProPublica

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Imagine if, during the Jim Crow era, a newspaper offered advertisers the option of placing ads only in copies that went to white readers. That's basically what Facebook is doing nowadays. The ubiquitous social network not only allows advertisers to target users by their interests or background, it also gives advertisers the ability to exclude specific groups it calls "Ethnic Affinities."

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Microaggressions-subtle slights based on stereotypes about a person's race, gender, or socioeconomic status-can be obvious and hurtful to the person receiving them, but unintended and unnoticed by the person saying them. They can contribute to a classroom environment that disengages even high-performing students. The tags below show the potential microaggressions in a teacher's everyday comments.

Related Story: Classroom Biases Hinder Students' Learning | Complete Series: Beyond Bias: Countering Stereotypes in School

Reporting: Sarah D. Sparks | Illustration: Vanessa Solis

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Illustration: Microaggressions in the Classroom

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Microaggressions-subtle slights based on stereotypes about a person's race, gender, or socioeconomic status-can be obvious and hurtful to the person receiving them, but unintended and unnoticed by the person saying them. They can contribute to a classroom environment that disengages even high-performing students. The tags below show the potential microaggressions in a teacher's everyday comments.

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Document is meant to frame schools' thinking on bias

With children of color making up a growing share of Oregon students, state education officials five years ago took another hard, long look at how those students were doing.

What they saw was sobering but not surprising: Despite attempts to close achievement gaps between students of color, immigrant students, and low-income students and their more affluent white peers, wide disparities persisted in student performance on state tests, graduation rates, school attendance, and college-going rates. So Oregon tried a different approach. In 2011, education agencies adopted an "equity lens," a public policy statement explicitly acknowledging the salience of race and ethnicity in contributing to disparate student outcomes and committing to narrow achievement and opportunity gaps from cradle to career through a focus on race and ethnicity.

Envisioned as a kind of "guiding document" to focus discussion and action on achievement gaps within the state and between Oregon and other states, the equity lens was unusual for its time. It lays out a set of beliefs that sees students' second language as an "asset" to be celebrated and advocates culturally responsive supports for English-language learners and embracing students' history.

The lens also calls for addressing the overrepresentation of children of color in special education and their underrepresentation in Advanced Placement and gifted and talented programs. Recognizing that achievement gaps begin early in life, the policy also emphasizes access to high-quality prekindergarten. It seeks to ensure that teachers are focused on equity and it expects educators to think deeply before making major decisions about who will be disadvantaged by those decisions, whether those stakeholders were included in the process, and if not, why.

"We needed to make sure that we had diverse opinions and thinking that would advantage all kids, not just my kids," said Robert Saxton, a former deputy superintendent of public instruction at the Oregon education department when the "equity lens" was adopted.

Now, the state is still struggling to close achievement gaps and the equity lens is seen as a very-much alive educational equity tool in that state, say those involved in its creation.

Expanding Infrastructure

The new lens built on other state equity initiatives that were already underway, said Pat Burk, an education professor at Portland State University, who has also held leadership positions in the Portland public schools and the state education department.

Those efforts included:

Development of tests aimed at providing fine-grained data on how students were doing on specific test items.

A review of state educator-licensing standards that led to changes to integrate cultural competency and equitable practices into teacher- and administrator-preparation programs.

Partnering with the state's four largest districts to work on their equity and diversity challenges.

Because of those actions, an infrastructure was already in place in some districts by 2011 to put the policies into practice. As a result, some districts were able to continue to focus on equity even as state financial contributions toward district-level equity work diminished during the Great Recession, Burk said.

At the state level, education officials use the equity lens as a criteria for disbursing grants. Districts seeking grants must show that their programs would address achievement gaps. The state education agency also uses the lens to seek additional funding for programs for traditionally underserved populations, including for the creation of education plans for African-American and American Indian/Native Alaskan students, Saxton said.

But the achievement gaps are proving difficult to eradicate. In the 2014-15 school year, for example, only 33.1 percent of Hispanic students and 32.4 percent of African-Americans in grades 3-5 were at Levels 3 or 4-the top two levels-on the state's English/language arts exams. That compares with 67.6 percent for Asian students and 57.6 percent for white students.

"I think we will see some differences in outcomes over time, but it's going to take a while," Saxton said. "We know what the results are going to be if we don't do anything. ... We don't know what the results are going to be when we do something different."

Burk said tackling the policy first was the right step.

Persistent Gaps

Change will not happen by "leaving something to the goodwill or personal motivation of a particular leader, or principal, or classroom teacher," he said. Some districts adopted the equity lens in whole or in part. Some use it in making hiring decisions.

Even so, the state has made less progress than it expected in creating a more-diverse educator workforce to serve its increasingly diverse student population. In a 2015 report to the state legislature, the state education department conceded that while it had increased the number of culturally and linguistically diverse teachers in the system, the state needed to do more. In the 2014-15 school year, students of color made up 36 percent of the state's K-12 student enrollment, yet only 8.5 percent of teachers were nonwhite. Latinos-the largest minority group-accounted for 22.4 percent of state K-12 enrollment that year but only 3.9 of teachers.

Eugene Superintendent Gustavo Balderas, a former English-language learner himself, said it's important that students of color have both high-quality teachers and teachers who look like them and understand their language and culture. "There is a strong need for modeling-it's not just me saying that, the research backs this up," said Balderas, whose district is working with universities to build a more-diverse pipeline of teachers from its current students.

As signs of progress, Oregon officials point to individual districts, schools, and programs that have narrowed gaps in specific areas. State officials hope to learn from them and scale up their successes. Districts like Forest Grove, which is part of the district network already working on equity and diversity challenges, have ingrained the equity lens into their hiring practices. They now ask specific scenario-based questions of potential employees to ascertain whether they are committed to working with students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Others have hired equity coaches to work with teachers.

And while the lens started out focused on race and ethnicity, districts such as Eugene use it to guide questions about gender identity as well.

The Woodburn district, about 35 miles from Portland, has one of the state's highest Latino graduation rate. Eighty percent of its 5,729 students are Hispanic.

Chuck Ransom, the district's superintendent, said the outcome resulted from strategies pushed in the mid-2000s that were not always popular with the community, which had to be convinced that the district was not serving all its students equally.

"We had a lot of conversations about equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes, and helping people to understand that it's not enough to say that everybody has the same shot," he said.

Those initiatives included the development of a K-12 dual-language program that allows students to receive instruction in their best language and graduate as fully bilingual. He also credits the district's decision to break up the comprehensive high school into four smaller schools, which allowed teachers to provide more individualized attention to students. The small-schools model provided "a structure that supported the strategies that worked," he said.

Lindsey Capps, the state's chief education officer, who serves an education policy advisor to Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, said the governor is committed to continuing an equity agenda. Brown has requested a total of $138.8 million in early-education intervention over two years and signed the Oregon Promise bill, which provides grants that cover the bulk of community college tuition.

Addressing Native American Students

The development process for the state's American Indian/Alaska Native Education State Plan also reflects efforts to address the needs of specific populations while involving them in the decisionmaking, state officials said.

Representatives from all nine federally recognized Native American tribes in the state were invited to meet with state education officials to provide input on the plan. In those discussions, the tribes asked the education department to appoint a liaison between the department and the tribes, said Modesta Minthorn, the education director of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The state appointed April Campbell, a former education director for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, to that position.

"That, in and of itself, was a big accomplishment- getting a seat at the table and getting the tribal voices included," Minthorn said.

The plan centers around increasing attendance and graduation rates, providing culturally relevant professional development for school district staff, increasing and retaining Native American teachers, and "implementing historically accurate and culturally embedded" Native American curricula in schools.

The state now plans to work with districts to change policies so that students who are absent for cultural ceremonies can get credit for their absences. Native Americans have the highest absenteeism rates in the state, in part because districts do not recognize time off for cultural celebrations and ceremonies, Minthorn said.

"If we were perfect, we wouldn't have these gaps," she added. But "together, with the state, and the local school districts, and the tribes, we are all on the same page saying, 'We can do better, we have to do better.'"

Published in Print: June 1, 2016, as Oregon Creates a 'Lens' for Viewing Educational Equity

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Oregon's 'Equity Lens' Frames Schools' Take on Bias

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With children of color making up a growing share of Oregon students, state education officials five years ago took another hard, long look at how those students were doing.

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By 10 a.m., the teacher referrals are already starting to fill the box outside Ari Gerzon-Kessler's office at Monaco Elementary, a low-income, high-minority school in this district at the northeast edge of Denver. The principal will bring in parents and call students from their classes, as he does several times a week.

In most schools, parents and students dread being called to the principal's office, but at Monaco Elementary, these are all "positive referrals," for which Gerzon-Kessler reads detailed praise from a teacher to the student, in English or Spanish, as his or her family looks on.

"This [referral] is four minutes of work for me, four minutes of work for the teacher, but it's such a positive empowering experience for the teachers and students and families," Gerzon-Kessler said.

Monaco Elementary School's positive referrals are one small volley in the much larger battle to overcome years of low achievement and crippling discrimination that have plagued the local school system.

Gerzon-Kessler and much of his staff came to the school after local and federal investigations from 2008 to 2012 exposed widespread discrimination against the Spanish-speaking community at Monaco and throughout its parent system, the Adams County 14 school district.

As a result of those probes, Colorado's Adams 14 joined the ranks of some 1,400 districts across the country that are under compliance agreements with the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights to correct systemic discrimination based on race, sex, disability, or other characteristics. And, like many of those districts, Adams 14 has rewritten and redistributed its anti-discrimination policy and started diversity training for teachers and other staff members.

In all those districts-and in thousands of others with achievement gaps and discipline disparities that never garner federal oversight-those working to overcome biases have a steep uphill battle, and many will fail.

Even so, through emerging cognitive research and in-depth school observations, educators and experts are starting to understand more about how unconscious biases undermine efforts to combat discrimination. And as districts like Adams 14 rebuild their school communities, they're also starting to understand how to prevent bias from hurting the children they serve.

'Broken Culture'

If the federal investigation is any indication, bias was pervasive in the Adams 14 system. In a district where more than 80 percent of the more than 7,500 students are Latino, and 60 percent are English-language learners, bilingual teachers and those who spoke accented English were pushed out. Teachers were told not to speak Spanish to students or parents.

In the high school, federal investigators found a teacher "almost caused a riot" after repeatedly removing Hispanic students from the classroom and telling them to "go back to Mexico." In several elementary schools, Spanish-speaking students were forced to throw out bilingual reading books. When one kindergartner fell and hit his head on the playground, he asked for help in Spanish, and the teacher on duty told him he could do so only in English. He went without medical care for hours before being taken to the hospital for stitches.

"Our school culture got broken, and we're still recovering from the traumas of the previous years," Gerzon-Kessler said.

The atmosphere was so toxic that in 2012, when Patrick Sánchez, the current superintendent of Adams 14, arrived, he spent his first six months in what he said amounted to "districtwide therapy sessions," digging through what had happened, who had been hurt, and how to rebuild.

Educators here and nationwide are learning to counter bias, they must reconsider how they think about it.

Discussions of bias in education often focus on explicit discrimination-or, as bias researcher John B. Diamond puts it, "bad people doing bad things intentionally."

But ordinary, well-intentioned people who believe themselves to be committed to equality can still maintain the bias that is "embedded in the system and the daily practices of a school," said Diamond, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"There needs to be a shift in the way we think and talk about it," he said.

An enormous increase in student data-from tests, disciplinary records, school climate surveys, and the like-has increased debates about the role of bias in such problems as gender gaps in science fields and higher suspension rates for children of color.

But "documenting the disparities and being aware of a problem in general doesn't mean you can solve it," said Calvin K. Lai, a Harvard University psychologist who studies ways to counter bias. In a 2014 evaluation of 17 different anti-bias interventions, Lai and his colleagues found that none reduced explicit racial biases like the ones seen in Adams 14, and fewer than half reduced unconscious, so-called "implicit" biases.

At the K-12 level, Lai said, many diversity-training programs are "powered by good intentions, but ... not a lot of empirical evidence."

"There's this sense that people can be colorblind, gender-blind, and that's just not how the mind works," Lai said. "Implicit bias is effortless and very fast."

People create mental shortcuts, based on their experiences and what they hear from others. The stronger the bias, the more time it takes for someone to mentally separate an individual from stereotypes connected to the person's race, gender, or other characteristics.

For example, a series of studies by University of California, Los Angeles, psychologist Phillip A. Goff found adults of different races shown photos of young boys routinely thought the black children were several years older and less childlike, and that they should be held more responsible for their actions than white boys of the same age.

Moment of Discrimination

Goff calls these split-second biases "fast traps," and research shows that the less time a person has to make a decision, the more likely that bias will influence his or her choice.

In one five-year study of a wealthy but diverse suburban district, researchers found school staff members were most likely to act on an implicit bias when they had to make a quick, subjective decision about how to apply school rules and to whom. That was true both for positive choices, such as whom a teacher called on in class, and negative ones, such as which of several misbehaving children to chastise, found Diamond and Amanda E. Lewis, an associate professor in African-American studies and sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"Race and gender influence whether a student's action is seen as silly or transgressive, a minor annoyance or in need of intervention," Lewis and Diamond write in Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequity Thrives in Good Schools, to be published in October by the Oxford University Press.

The bigger the gap between the background and the personality of an adult and that of the student, the more likely the adult will subconsciously view the student as representing a group, rather than as an individual.

Highly educated white professionals are less likely to voice anti-black attitudes, but more likely to show implicit racism, studies have found.

In separate research, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, a Stanford University social psychologist and the winner of a 2014 MacArthur "genius grant" for her research, found that black students are more likely than white students to be punished for "defiance" or "insubordination." Teachers who reviewed fictional student discipline reports of minor insubordination and class disturbance were more likely to recommend severe punishments, including suspension, for students with names like Deshawn or Darnell-names often associated with African-Americans-than identical profiles with whiter-sounding names like Greg and Jake.

Lewis, who also serves as a teacher coach for equity training, said teachers often aren't aware of racial and sex differences in the students they view as causing trouble, but they subconsciously note those differences when making disciplinary decisions.

"If I'm observing your classroom, I'm seeing a bunch of things going on that may objectively be rule-breaking, but they don't seem to bother you, so it's not seen as disruptive," Lewis said. "So why did you call out these [black students] who did the same thing?"

Teachers who feel stressed or overwhelmed themselves are also more likely to nitpick students in racially or gender-stereotyped ways. This sort of confrontation between teacher and student can backfire, disengaging both the student being disciplined and the rest of the class.

Nathaniel Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at Indiana University-Indianapolis, said the tensest moment in any of his classroom observations as a researcher came when a young black student in a secondary school classroom called out the answer to a question without first raising his hand.

"The teacher immediately yelled, 'Get out!' The young man had to leave the room even though he was on task and answering the question. And what about the children still left in that room? There was an uneasy tension" for the rest of the class period, Williams said during a symposium at the American Educational Research Association conference last spring.

Myth vs. Reality

When 'Helping' Hurts

In Adams 14, bilingual 3rd grade teacher Darlene A. Lopez said she grew up in the district. As a student, she recalled it as a warm, enthusiastic working-class system proud of its melting pot of white, black, Latino, and Asian students. But as an adult paraprofessional and later a teacher, she faced discrimination for speaking English with an accent during what she called the "years of abuse." Now she tries to work with new teachers to counter biased perceptions of students in Monaco Elementary.

"I still sometimes hear [from a teacher], 'Oh, that parent can't afford that car,' or 'That kid's going to jail,' " she said. "I always say, how can you say he's going to jail? How can you make a prediction about a kid in elementary school? You save up to travel, and that family values that car and saved up to get it," Lopez added. "When you get to know people on a personal basis, you start breaking down those stereotypes."

Lopez calls these "courageous conversations," and engaging in them can be like treading a minefield. That's because another clear way to kick an unconscious bias into active prejudice is to have someone from a disadvantaged group challenge the safety or moral legitimacy of someone in power. Think of a driver arguing against the officer who pulled him over or a teenager talking back to a teacher.

Those in helping professions, like teachers and counselors, also can be particularly susceptible to what is called "benevolent prejudice"-holding lower standards or wanting to provide inappropriate help to certain groups. In one study, Katie Wang, a Yale University postdoctoral social psychologist, asked blind and sighted people to identify prejudice in scenarios in which a blind person asked a sighted person for directions. Both groups flagged when the sighted person acted hostilely to the blind person. But only blind participants flagged it as discriminatory when, "instead of telling her where the bus stop is, the person grabs her arm and tries to bring her across the street," Wang said.

Moreover, sighted people were more likely to consider the blind person to be rude or ungrateful if she rejected the patronizing help.

"In some ways, patronizing help can be even more difficult [for disadvantaged students] to manage because there is so much ambiguity surrounding it," Wang said. "As they are growing up, the person is internalizing this message that if someone is trying to help you, you shouldn't confront them," she said. But in the long term, patronized people are less likely to become independent or self-confident in dealing with those of the patronizing group.

Breaking a Pattern

Biases can fester because teachers and administrators often see each situation individually, and don't recognize patterns in their own and others' behavior, said Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary for the Education Department's civil rights office.

"Most educators are in school because they want to help kids," Lhamon said. "They aren't thinking, 'Am I engaging in bias?' They're thinking, 'That kid is poking another kid with a pencil, and I want that to stop.' "

So how can schools counter implicit biases when so many everyday things in the education system can trigger or exacerbate them?

Experiencing individuals who run counter to a stereotype can weaken a bias; studies have found that students who read about great African-American scientists or political leaders who overcame discrimination to succeed were quicker to associate black faces and intelligence in a test for implicit bias, for example.

In Adams 14, Superintendent Sánchez has taken advantage of that tendency, bringing in Latino speakers such as the actor Edward James Olmos and University of California, Los Angeles education professor Pedro Noguera, who then directed New York University's Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, to speak to students and the community as successful members of their professions.

Sherry Segura, the principal at Rose Hill Elementary in Adams 14, another school identified in the civil rights investigation, has been trying to help her mostly English-native teachers develop more empathy for English-learner students-who account for 60 percent of the school's enrollment-by stepping into their shoes. In addition to ongoing diversity training and discussion groups, English-native teachers have time each week to study Spanish, including taking some "intimidating" reading tests in the language teachers did not yet know.

"You can read about what it's like [to be an ELL student], but it's important to have the opportunity to experience it," Segura said.

Walking a mile in an English-learner's shoes can help make teachers less likely to see their ELL students as less intelligent or engaged than their non-ELL peers.

Diamond and New York University's Noguera said that educators should find ways to change the environment in which adults make decisions, and regularly review their own and their students' behavior, rather than just talking about who has a given bias.

"A lot of the time we start with beliefs, and it's very hard to change beliefs," Noguera said. "Behavior is observable-you can go into the classroom and see that it is changing-so that's a more fruitful and productive way to approach [bias reduction]."

At Monaco Elementary, for example, teachers and the principal rewrote the discipline rubric to prevent students from being sent out of the classroom for minor offenses, like chewing gum or talking back. Teachers also collaborate to find underlying causes for chronic misbehavior.

Adams 14 is also analyzing its policies and practices for bias using a group that includes teachers, paraprofessionals, janitorial workers, secretaries, and others who might notice the day-to-day patterns of the schools.

Adams 14's equity efforts were bolstered in 2013, when the district made its largest single-year gains in state test scores since 2007. And, "the schools that had the best climate and culture also had the best academics," Sánchez, the superintendent, said.

Sánchez said he has hope, but knows the district has far to go.

"It's not for the meek," he said of the ongoing efforts to counter bias. "If you tinker, it turns to chaos. You come up with a great statement that diversity is a beautiful thing ... that goes over the central office in a placard, and the data doesn't change."

Published in Print: September 16, 2015, as Under Pressure, Colo. Schools Forge New Path

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Correction:

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Schools Deemed 'Discriminatory' Struggle to Erase Disparities

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By 10 a.m., the teacher referrals are already starting to fill the box outside Ari Gerzon-Kessler's office at Monaco Elementary, a low-income, high-minority school in this district at the northeast edge of Denver. The principal will bring in parents and call students from their classes, as he does several times a week.

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It's no secret that gifted and honors classes are often whiter and wealthier than their schools as a whole.

At every stage of students' educational careers, the pipeline to academically advanced study narrows for many low-income and minority students. Research suggests years of little biases add up, shaping who gets identified for gifted education and advanced courses and how many hoops they jump through to do so. And with politicians and policymakers increasingly focused on promoting rigorous, "college-ready" coursework, those leaks can leave thousands of the most promising students behind.

Here in Elk Grove, a suburb of Sacramento, Calif., the school district has invested more than $860,000 in overhauling the gifted- and advanced-course procedures that unintentionally discriminate against poor and minority students. In the process, teachers and administrators are learning how to see students' potential in new ways.

"It's a very challenging process," said John B. Diamond, a University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor of educational leadership and policy analysis who studies bias in schools.

"When people see evidence of disparities, they tend to filter it through preconceived ideas about kids' desire to learn or families' capacity to be involved," he said. "Part of the challenge is helping people see how their practices can exacerbate disparities."

Falling Off Track

Access to advanced courses remains a pressing issue too.

From 2003 to 2011, the portion of low-income white 4th graders who scored at the advanced level in mathematics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose from 2 percent to 3 percent. Low-income black and Hispanic students showed no gains during that time, with 1 percent of Hispanics and, statistically speaking, zero percent of black 4th graders reaching advanced scores on the math NAEP.

By contrast, 12 percent of high-income white students scored at the advanced level in 4th grade math in 2011, up 5 percentage points from 2003, but only 3 percent of black and 5 percent of Hispanic high-income 4th graders reached that level, up 2 percentage points and 3 percentage points, respectively, from 2003.

"Racialized" academic-tracking outcomes are not confined to schools in the South, as some might think, said Karolyn Tyson, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"Even when schools are giving kids the choice [to take advanced courses], they don't want to do it, because they don't feel prepared, and they don't want to fail," said Tyson, who studies honors access.

A series of analyses by the Education Trust found that more than 9 in 10 high school students nationwide attend a school with at least one Advanced Placement class, but poor students are nearly twice as likely to attend a school that offers only a few such classes, rather than a "full complement" of at least one AP class each in English, math, science, and social studies.

Five years ago, the 62,500-student Elk Grove system was one of hundreds of districts nationwide that were censured by the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights for not providing equal access to gifted education at the elementary level and to honors courses in high school.

Investigators found the generally high-performing Elk Grove had serious achievement gaps, but unlike districts such as Adams County 14 in Colorado, it had no history of intentional bias against its students.

Rather, in practice, the programs and policies in place on paper to boost achievement for all students unintentionally put poor or black, Hispanic, and Native American students at a disadvantage.

At the time, Elk Grove students who performed in the top 2 percent on the California Standards Test automatically qualified for gifted and talented education, or GATE. In theory, students also could be recommended by teachers or earn points in a "gifted matrix" for a high grade point average, creative ability, and classroom leadership, or a high score on a nonverbal-ability test designed to identify gifted students.

In practice, though, schools relied overwhelmingly on state test scores. Teachers didn't know how to gauge unusual creativity or leadership in the classroom. From 2009 to 2011, no black student was referred for gifted screening based on leadership or creativity, federal investigators found, and many teachers at low-income and high-minority schools did not even know it was an option.

Myth vs. Reality

In some of the district's schools, even black students who were doing advanced coursework within their classes were not recommended for gifted identification.

As a result, in 2013-14, Elk Grove had about 3,200 gifted students, but black, Hispanic, and English-learner students, as well as those in the foster-care system, were all underrepresented.

While low-income students made up nearly 60 percent of the district, only 3.5 percent of the district's low-income students were identified as gifted. By contrast, more than 11 percent of students not in poverty were considered gifted.

"We have nearly 1,000 kids; it's hard for me to believe that only 10 of our kids could qualify [as gifted]," said John Mifsud, the coordinator of gifted and talented education at Isabelle Jackson Elementary School, a Title I school in Elk Grove. "Having a parent who can lobby for you to get into GATE shouldn't be a prerequisite," he added.

Systemic Approach

Instead of trying to fix achievement gaps school by school, Elk Grove brought all its schools and grade levels together to understand the systemic problems.

Administrators found students who had been identified for gifted programs or participated in accelerated coursework in elementary school often lost their momentum in middle school, particularly if they were from low-income or minority families.

That's not uncommon. Achievement gaps between high-performing black and white students actually grew faster than the gaps between low-achieving black and white students. A study from the University of California, Los Angeles, for example, examined how gaps in math and reading performance changed from kindergarten to 5th grade. The gaps between black and white students who performed well at an early age grew twice as fast as the gaps between their low-performing peers.

"What we see, being immersed in this work, is that there are a lot of great things happening in schools, but unless the district allows for that to become systemic, then that equity won't be there for everyone," said Sonjhia Lowery, the director of Elk Grove's learning-support services.

If the elementary level provides a variety of classes and programs for gifted students, she said, "and then they get to middle school and they can take nothing, what good is all that work?"

The district streamlined its enrollment process and removed course requirements for joining Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate, which previously had varied from school to school and had more prerequisites than national programs.

"We tried to encourage kids to join [IB], but there have always been these barriers to participation-applications, prerequisites, meetings with parents-and those things had sorted kids," said Doug Craig, the principal of Elk Grove's Laguna Creek High School.

Laguna Creek is now working with its feeder schools Elitha Donner Elementary and Harriet Eddy Middle to build a "pre-IB" program with project-based courses, in both the middle and elementary grades.

The district also is experimenting with ways to identify capable but underperforming students and to ensure they are prepared both academically and psychologically to tackle challenging high school courses. Harriet Eddy Middle, for example, provides 30 minutes of individual tutoring for every student each day, plus a half-hour of social-emotional skills and stress-management lessons each Friday.

"The idea of support for a long time was around kids who weren't being successful, rather than kids who were ready but not accepting that challenge," said Alicia Canning, the gifted-programs coordinator for Elk Grove.

"So we've had to think about, how do you provide tutoring for kids who went from an A in the general [education] class to a C in the honors class, and supporting them so they can be successful and not want to leave?" she said. "That's something our schools have been thinking about systemwide."

Sandi Peterson, a Harriet Eddy counselor, has a personal stake in getting more low-income and minority students into honors courses.

Peterson was told her best bet after high school was "to marry a nice man and get a part-time job," she said. "I had teachers who told me that, and that's what has stuck with me."

Instead, Peterson became the only one of her six siblings to graduate from college, and she now seeks out low-income and minority students who showed promise in elementary grades but who are performing at the average or poorly in middle school.

"I run data reports each year on all the student subgroups coming in, and start finding who has a 2.5 GPA that I can work on," Peterson said. "I take a look at their history, find who might have had a move, or their parents divorced-I could name a hundred reasons they fell off course, but that helped me find and capture a lot of these students."

In the past three years, the honors society in Peterson's school has grown from 37 to 230 students.

Broader Measures of Giftedness

Elk Grove is also working to temper the potential for implicit bias in referrals for gifted education at all levels.

Research has found that teachers are less likely to recommend students for gifted programs when their names have nonstandard spellings or are associated with low-income or specific ethnic groups. A 2015 study in the Journal of Educational Psychology even found that teachers rated students' academic abilities higher when the students had similar personality traits to the teachers themselves.

These biases hold even when teachers consciously believe they are recommending students equitably.

Without changing the eligibility criteria for its gifted program, the Broward County, Fla., district more than doubled the number of low-income students and students of color who were identified after 2005. The district simply supplemented its identification system, based on teacher or parent referrals, with a universal screening for all 2nd graders.

The newly identified students "included many students with IQs significantly above the minimum eligibility threshold, implying that even relatively high-ability students from disadvantaged backgrounds were being overlooked under the traditional referral system," according to economists David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, and Laura Giuliano of the University of Miami, who studied Broward's initiative.

Last spring, Elk Grove administered the same nonverbal cognitive test to all of its 3rd graders. This fall, the total number of gifted students rose by nearly 100, with higher proportions of low-income, black, and Hispanic students identified as gifted.

The district's Elitha Donner Elementary School, for example, identified 12 low-income students as gifted this year, up from only three last year, and narrowed the white-black gap in gifted education from 4-to-1 in favor of whites to 2.5-to-1 in the last year alone.

Liz Perry, the coordinator of gifted education at Case Elementary, another Elk Grove district school, said teachers balked when they first saw the students identified by the universal gifted screening.

"Many of the students [identified this year] would never have received an invitation under the old system," Perry said. "Teachers were like, 'There's no way it's this kid.' They just weren't seeing it in the classroom.

"It's been about changing the mindset about who is a gifted student," she said, and "knowing who has the potential but needs a little more support going into it."

Next year, the district will roll out the rest of the changes to the identification system, with teachers and principals developing new rubrics for identifying exceptional creativity and leadership, both in class and in outside activities, such as community volunteering and church youth groups.

In the process, said Michelle Jenkins, Donner Elementary's principal, teachers are rethinking how they view a student's potential. "We're looking at our students differently," she said. "It's training your brain that 'gifted' is not always your top academic students."

Published in Print: October 28, 2015, as Unequal Access to Advanced Classes Targeted

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Schools Seek to Diversify Gifted, Honors Classes

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It's no secret that gifted and honors classes are often whiter and wealthier than their schools as a whole. At every stage of students' educational careers, the pipeline to academically advanced study narrows for many low-income and minority students.

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Tunette Powell's sons, JJ (left) and Joah, have been suspended from school eight times combined. (Tunette Powell)

I received a call from my sons' school in March telling me that my oldest needed to be picked up early. He had been given a one-day suspension because he had thrown a chair. He did not hit anyone, but he could have, the school officials told me.

JJ was 4 at the time.

I agreed his behavior was inappropriate, but I was shocked that it resulted in a suspension.

For weeks, it seemed as if JJ was on the chopping block. He was suspended two more times, once for throwing another chair and then for spitting on a student who was bothering him at breakfast. Again, these are behaviors I found inappropriate, but I did not agree with suspension.

Still, I kept quiet. I knew my history. I was the bad preschooler.

I was expelled from preschool and went on to serve more suspensions than I can remember. But I do remember my teachers' disparaging words. I remember being told I was bad and believing it. I remember just how long it took me to believe anything else about myself.

And even still, when my children were born, I promised myself that I would not let my negative school experiences affect them. I believed my experience was isolated. I searched for excuses. Maybe I was just a bad kid. Maybe it had something to do with my father's incarceration, which forced my mother to raise me and my brothers alone.

So I punished JJ at home and ignored my concerns. Then, two months later, I was called to pick up my 3-year-old son, Joah. Joah had hit a staff member on the arm. After that incident, they deemed him a "danger to the staff." Joah was suspended a total of five times. In 2014, my children have received eight suspensions.

Just like before, I tried to find excuses. I looked at myself. What was I doing wrong? My children are living a comfortable life. My husband is an amazing father to JJ and Joah. At home, they have given us very few problems; the same goes for time with babysitters.

I blamed myself, my past. And I would have continued to blame myself had I not taken the boys to a birthday party for one of JJ's classmates. At the party, the mothers congregated to talk about everyday parenting things, including preschool. As we talked, I admitted that JJ had been suspended three times. All of the mothers were shocked at the news.

"JJ?" one mother asked.

"My son threw something at a kid on purpose and the kid had to be rushed to the hospital," another parent said. "All I got was a phone call."

One after another, white mothers confessed the trouble their children had gotten into. Some of the behavior was similar to JJ's; some was much worse.

Most startling: None of their children had been suspended.

After that party, I read a study reflecting everything I was living.

Black children represent 18 percent of preschool enrollment but make up 48 percent of preschool children receiving more than one out-of-school suspension, according to the study released by the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights in March.

I immediately thought back to my own childhood. I thought back to the humiliating labels that greeted me before I could read. I thought back to the number of black friends and family members who also were suspended and expelled. I thought about my family and friends who had not overcome the detrimental effects of being suspended in preschool. I did not want that for JJ and Joah. I did not want it for any child.

But the next step was the hardest. At news of all of this, friends and relatives suggested that I pull my children out of the preschool program and move them into another. At first, I considered that. That move may have changed my kids' circumstances, but it would not have solved the problem. All across this country, black children are being suspended in preschool.

We can no longer put a Band-Aid on our nation's preschool-to-prison pipeline, which pushes children out of the education system and criminalizes relatively minor offenses. Moving my boys to another school would have provided a stopgap solution. It may have solved my problem, but it would not have solved the problem.

The problem is not that we have a bunch of racist teachers and administrators. I believe most educators want to help all children. But many aren't aware of the biases and prejudices that they, like all of us, harbor, and our current system offers very little diversity training to preschool staff.

A recent study published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that the subjects - mostly white, female undergraduates - viewed black boys as older and less innocent than their white peers. When photos of children were paired with descriptions of crimes, the subjects judged the black children to be more culpable for their actions than their white or Latino counterparts and estimated that they were an average of 4.5 years older than they actually were.

Authority figures strip black boys of their innocence at younger ages than white children. Diversity training for teachers and administrators would raise their awareness of how subconscious prejudices can drive racial discrepancies in disciplinary action.

I know that I am only one person and that it will be difficult for me to change the system. But I will do my part at my kids' preschool. I joined the parent advisory board and intend to work with it until I see change. I encourage other parents to join parent boards and attend school meetings that are open to parents. This is not the time to be silent. We must speak out. I cannot go back and undo what was done to me, but I refuse to let it be done to my children.
More from PostEverything: Zero-tolerance policies are destroying the lives of black children The education-reform movement is too white to do any good This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps

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My son has been suspended five times. He's 3.

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Black families fight entrenched prejudices to get fair discipline for their children in schools.

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When people ask Elma Dzanic what she does for living, she says her answer - she's a restorative justice specialist - gives most people pause. She does her work for Umoja, an organization that's been working with high school-age kids in Chicago's South Side since 1997. With in-school programming and a six-week summer internship called Community Builders, Umoja teaches students to define and create safe spaces in a society that condones and normalizes the violence in their communities. The staff also directly addresses conflict as it arises in the school, working with students through restorative justice: restoring broken relationships, building new ones, repairing harm and providing resources to support those involved in conflict.

"I grew up in Bosnia as a refugee after the war," Dzanic said. "I know why this work matters from my own experience. You don't have to go to post-conflict zones to see it - you just have to come down here. These kids get stuck in survival mentality."

Indeed, the death toll in Chicago outpaced that of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the summer of 2012. Dzanic told Truthout about watching one of her students walk to the Community Builders meeting space at North Lawndale College Prep one morning from her car, when she was stuck in traffic. She said he was looking over his shoulders with nearly every step.

"They're thinking, how do I survive to see the next day?" she said. "That's why we're here-trying to get them to see past today. Think past today, next week, and ask where do you want to go, who do you want to be? We're here to help them access that. We're helping them envision the future."

In Umoja's vision, Restorative justice in schools means that no one is treated like a criminal; everyone involved in a conflict receives equal attention and emotional support for resolution to establish accountability and get to the bottom of the problem. As opposed to out-of-school suspensions, which have been shown to increase dropout rates, or arrests for breaking school rules, Restorative Justice tactics demand students' effort and participation in conflict resolution while keeping them on school grounds.

Umoja has peace rooms for mediation and counseling in two schools - hoping to increase the number to four by next year - where hard work can take the place of out-of-school suspensions. It's clear that most interpersonal issues among her interns come from past trauma that's been left to fester, Dzanic told Truthout.

"Our students did a few activities where they were really triggered, and it's obvious that they don't feel comfortable sitting with sadness or depression," Dzanic said. "But what we see is if we don't deal with it, it comes out in spurts and in explosions. Students are like, 'When I was 7 ... .' And we say, 'Yeah, that was seven years ago, and you're not dealing with it. You've never been given the opportunity to really deal with it, and here's what that looks like. ' "

Restorative Justice is an answer to mass incarceration and to an increasingly punitive school system. Schools are often complicit, conditioning students to become prisoners by unnecessarily bringing them face to face with police to resolve problems that otherwise would mean a trip to the principal's office or the peace room.

Community Builders interns meet every day for six weeks in the summer from noon to 4:30 PM in one of North Lawndale College Prep's libraries; it has a wall of windows and a row of low bookshelves in the middle surrounded by worktables. The space is not extraordinary, but the security it offers is palpable.

"In the first three weeks [of Community Builders], three-fourths of students have experienced some sort of a traumatic event in their lives," Dzanic said. "You'll hear, 'I didn't have a place to sleep last night,' 'I haven't eaten for two days,' 'My cousin got shot, and I'm late because I was at the hospital,' 'I'm going to be absent because I'm going to a funeral.' It shows up in different ways - outbursts, shutting down. One student lost a best friend in a shooting at a carwash in the first week."

Dzanic is masterful in her role; she is at once an authority figure and a confidant. She commanded the room's attention, keeping summer restlessness at bay, while one student, Kewanna, 15, rested her head on her shoulder with familial ease.

Kewanna was running a fever and completely exhausted during the week Truthout spent some time in the classroom but didn't contemplate missing even a day of the program. For Dzanic, this unequivocally signifies the importance of the in-school safety net.

And with the city's massive public school slaughter earlier in 2013, which called for the shuttering of 54 public elementary schools mostly serving low-income communities, many younger students are losing important spaces and being consolidated in already-strained institutions in communities with the greatest need for social services.

"When there's so much instability in other parts of their lives, what message are we sending to young people when we say your school no longer exists? The door has been locked?" she asked.

In many cases, the organization is working to fulfill needs the Chicago Public School system doesn't have the capacity to satisfy. Umoja envisions a model of school counseling that provides emotional and academic support in tandem as a part of disciplinary action when it's truly necessary. And this solution isn't just important for Chicago teens; in 2002 the United States had a juvenile incarceration rate five times higher than the next-highest rate in a developed country.

When Kewanna was in eighth grade, her father was shot and killed in gang crossfire on his way to the corner store to buy juice for his children. It's a story she rarely tells but is feeling compelled to share more and more since the beginning of the summer.

"Way before I was born, he was a gang banger. But after that, he got himself together," Kewanna said. "My daddy walked out there, walked out there in the midst of the gun violence, and my daddy got hurt. My friend came in like, 'Your daddy just got shot,' and I told her to stop playing. I couldn't believe it. And she said 'No. For real,' and I could tell she was serious because there were tears coming from her eyes. You could just hear the gunshots outside."

Now, Kewanna says she has trouble connecting with anyone within and beyond Community Builders. Still, she's a regular visitor in Umoja's peace room in her school to deal with her temper and is beginning to see what this agonizing effort to communicate could mean for her.

"There are kids out here really struggling whose parents can't provide for them," Kewanna said. "At the age of 15, they're taking care of themselves and I think [Community Builders] can really help. The difference in peoples' lives is that it would help them to talk about it. If someone has this much frustration, they have to talk to someone. Because if they don't, they'll build it up and the pain will take over. I've learned you have to let them know how you feel."

This kind of trauma isn't limited to Community Builders interns. But for lots of other students in Chicago and around the country, they're being addressed in entirely different ways. In 2003, more than 8,000 kids were arrested in Chicago public schools, according to an Advancement Project Study. More than 40 percent of those incidents resulted from unarmed assaults or batteries in which no one was hurt - and sometimes just threats. Between 2000 and 2004, Denver Public Schools had a 71 percent increase in the number of students referred to law enforcement for disciplinary infractions instead of handling problems in school.

For kids seeking the sort of outlet Kewanna described, Chicago public school counselors are scarce and overworked, hampered by administrative duties. At the same time, out-of-school suspensions that leave young people unoccupied and with fewer options to deal with problems constructively or access emotional support are becoming more common.

"Currently, we are just setting our young people back," Dzanic said. "We are feeding them into the school-to-prison pipeline without giving them an opportunity to reflect. There's such a focus on, say, a law that's been broken - what you did wrong. This program is about the harm that's been caused, and it's not always focused on repair."

In Edward G. Foreman High School, students facing out-of-school suspension can trade ten days at home with nothing to do for hard work in the peace room and just a few days of in-school suspension.

"The more that we put kids out of the building and out on the street, the less likely it is that they're ever going to come back," Umoja CEO Ted Christians told Truthout. "High School might be one of the last institutions for them. And if we lose them there, the next institution that will catch them is the criminal justice system."

Indeed, in Chicago's North Lawndale neighborhood, 70 percent of men between 18 and 45 have been incarcerated. Community Builders aspires to interrupt the pattern by teaching kids alternatives to the violence around them through restorative justice.

"Where the school system is coming up short is what to do when we accomplish the goal of keeping young people in the building," Christians said. "How do we equip the school for students who have been in altercations and need interventions? Restorative justice is the real answer. You're teaching them what it takes to behave, not just laying out the rules, and helping them understand what it takes to be a part of this community."

As Umoja's model makes clear, the organization believes that helping students feel safe is a major part of getting them to open up. The students Truthout spoke with said that they feel safe in their communities outside of Community Builders. But as conversations progressed, it became clear that their definition of safe is as barebones as they come.

"We play games related to safe spaces," Brianna, 14, told Truthout. "One day they gave us maps of all the neighborhoods and had us put a red squares around the areas that were unsafe. And you know how many red boxes there were? And hardly any green boxes. People even picked police stations as being unsafe. If you really think about it, you know nowhere is safe. But looking at that map with all that red was really shocking."

Students also discussed an activity from their first meeting, in which they were asked to stand if any of a series of statements applied to them.

"They asked, 'Have you ever been threatened and didn't come to school the next day?' And two people stood up," Brianna told Truthout. "You wouldn't want anyone to know you were scared, so for them to open up like that was shocking. I feel like I would be judged if I were to do that. But I realize nobody judged them or anything."

In week four, they prepared to bring their newfound safe-space knowledge to Youth Organizations Umbrella Inc., a program for elementary students just north of Chicago, in Evanston. There, they facilitated peace circles and introduced the tactics they learned to create and define safe spaces to the younger kids.

This is part of becoming what CB terms Safe Space Keepers, which Lavarise, 16, told Truthout his community needs more of.

"It wouldn't be as violent here - people would come and talk instead of using guns, before it gets to the killing and shooting," Lavarise said. "Some people think that talking isn't going to get them anywhere when it actually does. I am never violent. But before, I would just snap and yell, and that wasn't getting me anywhere. I know you don't have to fight. Talking about it makes you feel like you're important, heard and safe."

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Chicago Students Build Safe Space, Practice Restorative Justice

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When people ask Elma Dzanic what she does for living, she says her answer - she's a restorative justice specialist - gives most people pause. She does her work for Umoja, an organization that's been working with high school-age kids in Chicago's South Side since 1997.

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Kyle Thompson likes playing football, playing video games, and hanging out with his friends. He's also been under house arrest since last March and barred from school for six months. Why? His teacher wanted to see a note he had written, and she tried to take it from him. He thought she was teasing him about it and was playfully trying to get the note back. When he realized this wasn't play, he immediately let her have the note. That misunderstanding got Kyle thrown in jail, and placed under house arrest.

Kyle is part of a national trend where children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Many of these children have learning disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and counseling services. Instead, they are isolated, punished and pushed out. "Zero-tolerance" policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while cops in school lead students being criminalized for behavior that should be handled inside the school. Students of color are especially vulnerable to push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline.

The ACLU believes that children should be educated, not incarcerated. We are working to challenge policies and practices that contribute to the school to prison pipeline.

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Kyle Thompson likes playing football, playing video games, and hanging out with his friends. He's also been under house arrest since last March and barred from school for six months. Why? His teacher wanted to see a note he had written, and she tried to take it from him.

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One day last fall, Niya Kenny was sitting in her math class at Spring Valley High School in Richland County, South Carolina, when a police officer came into the classroom. A girl in her class had refused to put away her cell phone, and the teacher had summoned an administrator, who called on the officer assigned to the school. Niya thought the officer was bad news - his name was Ben Fields, but he was so aggressive that students knew him as Officer Slam. As soon as he entered the room, she called out for other students to record him. Three different students made cell phone videos of what happened next. Fields picked the girl up, flipped her in her desk, and then grabbed an arm and a leg to throw her across the room. Niya stood up and called out, she recalled later. "Isn't anyone going to help her?" she asked. "Ya'll cannot do this!" Fields yelled at Niya to sit down and be quiet. She was so scared that she was yelling and crying. As Fields handcuffed the other girl, he turned toward Niya and told her she was going to jail, too. Niya was arrested, taken to jail for the day, and released with criminal charges of "disturbing a school."

Now she's fighting back. On her behalf, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against South Carolina to challenge a law that makes "disturbing a school" a criminal offense.

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Niya Arrested for Challenging Police Abuse in School

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One day last fall, Niya Kenny was sitting in her math class at Spring Valley High School in Richland County, South Carolina, when a police officer came into the classroom. A girl in her class had refused to put away her cell phone, and the teacher had summoned an administrator, who called on the officer assigned to the school.