School Discipline Data

https://ocrdata.ed.gov/DistrictSchoolSearch#schoolSearch


From Samuel Sinyangwe
‏Verified account @samswey

the US Dept of Education just released data on racial disparities in every school and school district in America (from preK-12). Here’s how you use the data to show if/how your school discriminates against black students and other marginalized groups.

First, lookup the most recent year of data available for your school and/or school district. Right now that’s data on the 2015-16 school year.

Click your school and it will pull up basic info on students/teachers. On the right is the most important info: data on school discipline, policing in schools and whether all students have access to gifted/advanced courses.

Click on the Discipline Report on the right side and you’ll see which groups of students your school is most likely to suspend, expel, and refer to law enforcement. You can also see who’s more likely to be arrested at school using the “school related arrests” tab.

When you present data showing black students are more likely to be disciplined, you will inevitable find people who try to say that it’s because black students misbehave more. That’s a racist lie. Be prepared to shut them down with the facts: https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9646504/discipline-race-charts …

Make sure you are intersectional in your analysis: black girls tend to be disciplined at particularly high rates compared to white girls and students with disabilities (defined as IDEA on the site) - especially students of color tend to be disciplined at the highest rates.

For example, you could say: “The data shows black students are 10% of students at our school but 28% of those suspended. Research shows that disparities like this tend to be due to discriminatory school discipline policies, not student behavior. What’s your plan to address this?”

(Adding other statistics as appropriate and relevant to your school/the changes you want to see)

This database is a starting point. Ask for/collect more info too. Which infractions are students suspended for the most? Which teachers suspend students more? Who’s referring students to police and why? What’s your school’s policy on these things and how should it be changed?

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Read about how other schools have taken action to address the issues you’ve identified. The Advancement Project / Dignity in Schools are good resources. Reach out to activists and organizations #onhere if you have questions. Share your insights with others, organize, take action.

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Outgroup homogeneity and terorism coverage in media

http://www.wbur.org/npr/532963059/when-is-it-terrorism-how-the-media-covers-attacks-by-muslim-perpetrators

"New research from Erin Kearns and colleagues at Georgia State University shows that the president is right — sort of. There is a systematic bias in the way terrorism is covered — just not in the way the president thinks.
Kearns says the "terrorism" label is often only applied to cases where the perpetrator is Muslim. And, those cases also receive significantly more news coverage.
"When the perpetrator is Muslim, you can expect that attack to receive about four and a half times more media coverage than if the perpetrator was not Muslim," Kearns says. Put another way, "a perpetrator who is not Muslim would have to kill on average about seven more people to receive the same amount of coverage as a perpetrator who's Muslim."
Perhaps these findings are not all that surprising to you. But there are disturbing implications for the way Americans perceive Muslims, and the way Muslims perceive themselves."

The Creation of Ingroups and Empathy

Cubs Joe Maddon's "Hazelton Integration Project is a great example of how creating ingroups can help people bridge outgroups like race, immigration status and social class.

http://www.pbs.org/program/american-creed/






And this episode of On Being demonstrates how creating an ingroup can also create empathy.

"We'd heard Derek Black, the former white power heir apparent, interviewed before about his past. But never about the friendships, with other people in their twenties, that changed him. After his ideology was outed at college, one of the only orthodox Jews on campus invited Derek to Shabbat dinner. What happened over the next two years is like a roadmap for transforming some of the hardest territory of our time."

Culture Lab from U of MD

http://www.theculturelab.umd.edu/

The Culture Lab is a resource, forum, and training lab run by sociologists at the University of Maryland.  We conduct advanced analysis of cultural frames of social issues and groups; especially those linked to gender, race/ethnic, and class divisions in the U.S. and globally. These cultural frames are vital to population health through their links to people's expectations, behaviors, and mental and physical health.

Through coursework, the Culture Lab trains Maryland graduate students in the social scientific analysis of culture with a methodological emphasis on content and interpretive analysis of texts. The Lab also maintains this website as a repository and resource for students and scholars around the world to consult as they conduct their own analyses of culture. Follow discussions about culture, how to measure it, and best practices for analysis on Twitter.

Racial Dot Map, Segregation and Prison

Here is the map from University of Virginia;

This racial dot map is an American snapshot; it provides an accessible visualization of geographic distribution, population density, and racial diversity of the American people in every neighborhood in the entire country. The map displays 308,745,538 dots, one for each person residing in the United States at the location they were counted during the 2010 Census. Each dot is color-coded by the individual’s race and ethnicity. The map is presented in both black and white and full color versions. In the color version, each dot is color-coded by race.

From Patheos blog;

The University of Virginia used the 2010 census to create a map of the U.S. overlaid with different colored dots—one dot for each person. The map uses blue dots for white people, green dots for black people, orange dots for Hispanic people, red dots for Asian people, and brown dots for Native Americans or other racial groups. The map is utterly fascinating, especially when looking at cities, because it demonstrates the level of segregation that exists in most places....

The level of segregation illuminated by these maps is sobering in and of itself. But there’s something even more sobering to be found in the racial dot map.

While browsing through some rural areas, which are mostly made up of open space and blue dots (white people), I began to notice something odd. I kept finding random collections of green dots (black people) in weirdly delineated, concentrated areas.

Outgroup stereotypes and elite college membership.

From the Atlantic;

Princeton is academically rigorous, but too exclusive and hierarchical. MIT has brilliant students, but it’s socially unpleasant. The University of Pennsylvania is altogether too career-minded.These are some of the opinions that researchers heard when they asked 56 Harvard and Stanford students—most of them still in school, some of them recent graduates—which colleges they applied to and how they decided which one to attend.The researchers, Amy Binder, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego, and Andrea Abel, a graduate student there, published their analysis of the students’ sometimes barbed evaluations—recorded in interviews conducted five years ago—in the journal Sociology of Education late last year. 

Snapchat and your brain.

Snapchat and your brain.

From PBS;

https://www.pbs.org/video/how-do-different-social-media-platforms-affect-your-mood-05q7kp/

Study Finds Racial Gap Between Who Causes Air Pollution And Who Breathes It

From NPR;

Pollution, much like wealth, is not distributed equally in the United States.
Scientists and policymakers have long known that black and Hispanic Americans tend to live in neighborhoods with more pollution of all kinds, than white Americans. And because pollution exposure can cause a range of health problems, this inequity could be a driver of unequal health outcomes across the U.S.
A study published Monday in the journal PNAS adds a new twist to the pollution problem by looking at consumption. While we tend to think of factories or power plants as the source of pollution, those polluters wouldn't exist without consumer demand for their products.
The researchers found that air pollution is disproportionately caused by white Americans' consumption of goods and services, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic Americans.

How economic inequality might affect a society's well-being

From PBS NewsHour;

Economic inequality is a major theme in the American political dialogue. As the country’s wealthiest people continually become richer at the expense of the poor, some research suggests they may actually become less happy and healthy. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on the nuanced data and the challenges of evaluating a society’s well-being.

Transcript: Watch the video or read the full story here