Learning While Black

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But a major study to be released in December in The Urban Review journal squarely shows the opposite. Russell Skiba, an associate professor of educational psychology at Indiana University, charted the discipline patterns of 11,000 middle-school students in a major urban district in Indiana, in which black students were more than twice as likely as their white peers to be sent to the principal's office or suspended — and four times as likely to be expelled. When Skiba factored in the financial status of the students and their families, the discipline gap did not budge. But a second finding smacks more overtly of discrimination: while white students were typically reprimanded for behaviors like smoking and vandalism, black students were more often disciplined for nebulous infractions like excessive noise and disrespect. "It's pretty clear that black students are referred for more subjective behaviors," he says. "You can choose not to use the word racism, but districts need to look seriously at why this is going on."

The more closely districts look, the less transparent the diagnoses. Beginning last year, Texas' Austin Independent School District began requiring principals to track discipline data by race to discern if any specific teachers were using a heavier hand with black students. The answer was yes, but the reasons were far from straightforward. Cornel Jones, principal of Austin's Oak Springs Elementary School, does not blame racism but chalks the problem up to "cultural misunderstandings" between his white teachers and the 97%-minority student body. One insidious source of confusion: When a teacher scolds a black or Latino student for a simple matter like talking out of turn, Jones says, that student typically looks away out of respect. Feeling her authority challenged, the teacher may send the student to the office. "It cycles up into a big monster, and then nothing the child can do is right," says Jones.

But when does misunderstanding slip over the line into prejudice? "There are racial misunderstandings, but there is also racial paranoia," says Beverly Cross, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Education. "We see this a lot with black boys who are cute until about the fourth grade, and then teachers start to fear them." Linelle Clark, Austin's dropout-prevention coordinator, sees some evidence of this in her district. She recalls that "one principal noticed a teacher with a pattern of sending the same black kid to the office, and when he called her on it, she said, 'I'm scared of that child.'"

Because racial-profiling claims are difficult to prove in court, civil rights activists urge parents to bypass the legal system and confront school officials directly. In some cities, the N.A.A.C.P. accompanies families to expulsion hearings. Another tactic popular among advocates is to gather a district's discipline statistics — which are collected by the government and can be obtained by filing a Freedom of Information Act request — and prepare self-published reports for local news broadcasts. After enough badgering, some districts have begun to bend their discipline codes. Last fall Chicago public-schools chief Arne Duncan directed principals to stop handing out suspensions for picayune infractions like "gum chewing" and reserve the punishment for violent offenses. The district is working with local activists and civil rights attorneys to launch a program allowing students to be tried by a peer jury for violations such as arguing with a teacher or using profanity.