The following article by Casey Quinlan was posted on the ThinkProgress website March 28, 2018:
A White House commission plans to consider a rollback of Obama administration guidelines on student discipline.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Republican lawmakers are considering moves that may undo years of progress in dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.
A White House commission on school safety plans to hold its first meeting on Wednesday. According to Politico, the first meeting will be closed press, but subsequent meetings will have open press. There are already a lot of critics of the commission since teachers and students will be missing from the conversation, and the commission seems to be more interested in media coverage of school shootings and the influence of video games than on reforming gun policy.
But one of the biggest concerns is that the commission is considering rolling back Obama administration guidance on school discipline that discouraged officers from disciplining students and pushed for more positive and less punitive responses to student behavior. In other words, the federal government will undo the Obama administration’s work to keep students in school and out of the criminal justice system. Continue reading “Betsy DeVos is using school shootings to justify draconian new discipline guidelines”