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Violates the school dress code. Use mobile phones in class. Let the teacher let his mouth go.
There was a time when such behavior, known as “deliberately rebellious” halted students in California public schools.
However, over the past decade, ocean changes in state discipline policies – which emerged in part from the understanding that such suspensions disproportionately affect black, Latino and Indigenous students – have largely outlawed such punishments. Instead, schools were encouraged to look at practices including conflict resolution and counseling.
But now, the executive order signed by President Trump has been able to predict the legal agenda of California’s pioneering law, which has reviewed school discipline by banning intentional defiant suspensions against K-12 students.
In an order on April 23rd, Trump directed the education sector to root school discipline frameworks based on “discriminatory fairness ideology” and to issue new “compatibility” practices in K-12 schools in the country, criticizing previous guidance from the democratic administration. President Obama had instructed schools to avoid enacting discipline policies that punished disproportionately underrepresented groups of students.
Trump said such rules amount to racism. Because his order stated that Obama-era directives “effectively require discrimination against schools based on race by imposing discipline based on racial traits, not just objective behaviour.”
The executive order is in turmoil between educators and lawyers who are wondering about their potential impact on California. Some say they see it as the result of the Trump administration’s widespread attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“Shock and adoration are our goal here: to shake and confuse people,” said Pedro A. Noguera, dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education School. “But…where is the guidance? Where do you want to produce evidence that what they’re doing will help the kids? That’s not here. The public must insist that before you start to tear something, you start building something better for our children.”
A spokesman for California Atty. General Rob Bonta said in a statement that his office is reviewing the executive order and will monitor its implementation “for compliance with the law.”
The California Department of Education expressed firm support for state policies, saying uneven student disciplinary disciplinary “is a real concern in our education system and should not be ignored or obfuscated by the Trump administration.” The department said it will continue to address student safety with a “stock lens” to “prevent students being disciplined differently due to skin color and ethnic background color.”
“The broad concept of ‘fairness’ is not illegal,” the department said in a statement. “It’s also not the cause of very realistic school safety issues that require strong leadership and common sense solutions.”
How Trump’s Order changes discipline
California’s discipline law, and previous federal guidance, stems from legal doctrine known as “differential theory of influence.”
We believe that seemingly neutral policies can have a more negative impact on some racial groups than others, and that they could be challenged for those reasons.
But Trump’s order puts aside the government’s different theory of impact and called on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to create new guidance on school discipline within 30 days. By the 120-day mark, she is to submit a detailed report on the status of “School Discipline Based on Discriminatory Property Ideology,” which details in part a “model” policy protecting “student safety and the educational environment.”
The executive order attracted criticism from school advocacy groups and prominent education voices.
She said the education-focused orders Trump signed last week and others “allow school discipline practices that target and punish students of color and students with disabilities at an uneven rate.”
Asked about criticism of Trump’s instructions on school discipline, the U.S. Department of Education provided a statement from McMahon, who said the Biden administration had “put a racially fair allocation to student safety.”
“The success of an adult student should start with a classroom performance and teach children to identify good and evil from an early age,” she added.
What school data shows
The issue of discipline in education is troubling from kindergarten to high school, and norms have been changing in recent years, driven in part by data illuminating those who are suspended.
The Times reported in 2019 that the California Department of Education’s Statistics Bureau showed that in the last two years black students accounted for 17% of the total suspensions in California.
The data was a changing prelude. In 2019, a new state law halted the intentional rebellious halts in public schools for fourth and fifth graders, banning them in sixth and eighth grades in sixth and eighth grades in sixth and eighth grades. The state had already ended such suspensions for kindergarten through third grade.
In 2023, the state extended the law to ban middle and high school students from halts. They also banned suspension and expulsion due to school refusal and lateness. The law stated that previous laws “had a disproportionately beneficial effect on black students.”
At the time, then-state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), author of the bill, said at the time that “instead of going out of school, we owe our students to help them understand what is going on and fix it.” The law has widespread support, and only a handful of Republican senators passed easily and voted against it.
Educators can suspend students for more serious behavior, such as physical violence, drug possession and use, theft, or bullying. And teachers can generally eliminate destructive and rebellious students from the classroom, but only through a single class of suspension.
The Los Angeles Unified School District was caught up in the issue in 2013, when it intentionally banned halting rebellious students. Instead, the authorities had to find other ways of discipline. Other California school districts, including Azusa and Pasadena school districts, quickly followed suit.
A spokesman for LA Unified said that it was “following state laws and district policies regarding student discipline, including due process for all students, regardless of protected categories.” “Race is not a consideration in applying student discipline policies in districts.”
Ebony Batiste, who teaches restorative justice at La Unified’s 74th Street Elementary School, said discipline should not be met with a “one size fit” approach. “It’s like putting a band-aid on two students. One has a cut and the other has an open wound that is bleeding,” she said. “Support should be tailored to the individual student or group of students.”
She instructs students about conflict resolution and shares how they can communicate their thoughts and feelings. She said she has long been seeking “an alternative that’s always just punished.”
“There’s a reason for intentional disobedience, usually when a child does,” Baptiste said. “Every action tells a story and tells something.”
She said she wasn’t worried about Trump’s orders. “Because it looks like most [Trump’s] The executive order simply expresses his goals and wishes for what he hopes for for education,” she said.
But I fear some important changes.
In a statement, Meira Lila, a senior supervising lawyer for public advisors, said the directive “will lead more students of color to come and go from learning.”
The order “contradicts many studies that undermine decades of progress and show that punitive and exclusive discipline fails,” she said. It “makes educators not rule out alternatives.”
It’s not just organizations that leaned towards freedom that are critical of Trump’s order.
“The federal government’s obligations regarding school discipline are not the solution, regardless of which party is in charge,” said Dean McGee, a senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, a conservative legal group.
“Local schools should not be microcontrolled by changing policies from Washington that change with each new administration,” McGee added. “Discipline needs can vary by district, and local school boards and supervisors are in a better position to address those needs. When they get wrong, they can be held accountable by their own community.”
But he also criticised California’s ban on intentional, defiant suspensions, calling it “another example of a top-down policy that risks watching parents, teachers and community voices on school-friendly discipline measures.”
McGee suggested a solution. “We will strengthen families with more educational freedom through school vouchers and scholarships, charter schools, open registrations, and less burdensome homeschooling regulations.”
Hiding from Project 2025
Officially entitled “Reviving the Discipline Policy of Common Sense Schools,” the executive order monitors the government’s next steps and is not expected to force immediate changes.
But one thing is for sure, despite Trump’s denials of previous Project 2025, it was created by his allies and propaganda “traditional American values.” The executive order is another signal that he is taking his clues from controversial, conservative political initiatives.
Trump has appointed various figures related to Project 2025 to government roles. Among them is Russell Vert, the playbook architect who was appointed Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Project 2025 talks about the use of different theories of impact in education. Some of that criticism appeared in Trump’s executive order. Both references — jor jor-Jor-Jor-in-the-worthy — refer to the same Obama administration letter from 2014 that focused on disparities about how punishments were made in schools and warned against discriminatory discipline.
“Unfortunately, federal overreach has urged many school leaders to prioritize pursuit of racism in school discipline indicators for student safety (such as detention, suspension, expulsion, etc.), Project 2025 reads. It also sets out several steps that should be taken to correct democratic “overstops.” They include retracting the Biden administration’s guidance focusing on racial disparities in discipline and encouraging school districts to ensure their policies are fair.
Trump’s executive order does just that.
Forte said in a statement that the education-focused order Trump signed last week and others “reflecting the blueprint in Project 2025 – an extreme policy plan designed to eliminate the federal role in education, restore public schools, and entrust higher education to the privileges given to wealthy families.”
USC Dean Noguera said he saw similarities between Trump’s barrage of executive orders on education and his many anti-DEI directives.
“Their overall strategy appears to be driven by ideology rather than a desire to create useful new policies and programs,” he said. “They have not built anything and their reliability is very questionable.”
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