Readers, be sure to take a listen to WUIS radio’s Dusty Rhodes’ reporting series “Black and White” on the racially uneven discipline practices in District 186 Springfield Public Schools. The series, which has been airing all this week, is archived at wuis.org. Rhodes, the education desk reporter, has analyzed mountains of data and interviewed experts as well as students themselves to show that disciplinary procedures are used on black students far more than white students, and far out of proportion to their percentage of the student body. The reports are disturbing, but there is hope in the reaction of District 186 Superintendent Jennifer Gill, who learned of the disparities when the district assembled reports in answer to Rhodes’ inquiries. “The data is clear,” Gill told the reporter. “We’re not walking away from the data. We just want to unpack it a little bit.” –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2015.
