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Voices in Urban Education
Learning Environments
VUE Number 19, Spring 2008
EXCERPT:
The Impact of Order-Maintenance Policing on an Urban School Environment: An Ethnographic Portrait
By Kathleen Nolan
Kathleen Nolan is an assistant professor of education at Mercy College.
> Author's biography
> Full article [PDF: 9 pages]
A school's policy of imposing order to allow learning ended up criminalizing misbehavior and failed to enhance the learning environment.
In the mid-1990s, zero tolerance, a term appropriated from the criminal justice system, was adopted as a framework for school discipline. Zero tolerance called for swift and harsh punishment, suspension or expulsion, and, at times, police intervention, even for first-time offenders. Although the policy was initially designed to target weapons and drug possession in school, zero tolerance quickly expanded to include a wide range of minor school infractions (Skiba & Peterson 1999; Advancement Project & Civil Rights Project 2000; Brown 2003, 2005).
More recently, in a growing number of racially segregated schools in poor urban neighborhoods, zero tolerance has been augmented by another approach rooted in the criminal justice system — the heavy influx of law enforcement officials and the use of order maintenance, a popular form of street policing that entails cracking down on low-level, “quality of life” violations of the law through the issuance of court summonses and misdemeanor arrests (Harcourt 2001).
These disciplinary tactics have become prominent as a purported means to regain control over troubled urban schools. But how do criminal justiceŠoriented disciplinary practices impact the school environment and the educative aims of the institution? What happens when law and order in schools is viewed as the primary means of mitigating disorder?
In this article, I report on an ethnographic study I began in fall 2004 in a Bronx high school I will call UPHS (urban public high school). The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of zero tolerance and order maintenance on the school environment and students’ lives. I observed student behaviors and disciplinary practices several times a week through the course of the year; I interviewed school personnel, law enforcement officials,1 and students; and I conducted a systematic review of occurrence reports, which document disciplinary incidents and interventions. Finally, in order to gain insight into the entire disciplinary process, I accompanied some students to court when they responded to summonses.
What I learned during my year at UPHS was that within the new disciplinary framework, there was a pervasive assumption among administrators and deans (teachers who are assigned disciplinary duties) that law and order was a precondition for educational innovation. It also became clear that order-maintenance policing was not primarily a means of ridding schools of serious violence; it was used, instead, as a general strategy of control.2
Through my review of the occurrence reports, I also found that the majority of incidents in which the police were involved and for which students were punished through the legal system began with a student breaking a school rule, not the law, and these incidents occurred mainly outside the classroom as large numbers of students remained in the hallways and other “public” areas of the building when classes were in session.
FOOTNOTES
1 New York City Police Department (NYPD) police officers from the local precinct, NYPD officers assigned to a special school safety taskforce, and security agents who work under the auspices of the NYPD.
2 According to school and police reports and numerous testimonies from school personnel and students, the school did have fewer incidents of violence than it had had in previous years. However, most people I interviewed attributed this not to the influx of police officers, but to the hard work of the deans and administrators who relied as often as they could on counseling, peer mediation, parental meetings, and other less-punitive disciplinary approaches. Most people I interviewed also attributed the decrease in violence to the removal of over 100 of the most notorious students prior to my entering UPHS. Although this practice likely did reduce the violence at UPHS, it is worth noting that it also served to exclude young people from school and, in reality, it only moved the violence to other schools and/or the streets in which those students ended up.
Learning Environments
VUE Number 19, Spring 2008
EXCERPT:
The Impact of Order-Maintenance Policing on an Urban School Environment: An Ethnographic Portrait
By Kathleen Nolan
Kathleen Nolan is an assistant professor of education at Mercy College.
> Author's biography
> Full article [PDF: 9 pages]
A school's policy of imposing order to allow learning ended up criminalizing misbehavior and failed to enhance the learning environment.
In the mid-1990s, zero tolerance, a term appropriated from the criminal justice system, was adopted as a framework for school discipline. Zero tolerance called for swift and harsh punishment, suspension or expulsion, and, at times, police intervention, even for first-time offenders. Although the policy was initially designed to target weapons and drug possession in school, zero tolerance quickly expanded to include a wide range of minor school infractions (Skiba & Peterson 1999; Advancement Project & Civil Rights Project 2000; Brown 2003, 2005).
More recently, in a growing number of racially segregated schools in poor urban neighborhoods, zero tolerance has been augmented by another approach rooted in the criminal justice system — the heavy influx of law enforcement officials and the use of order maintenance, a popular form of street policing that entails cracking down on low-level, “quality of life” violations of the law through the issuance of court summonses and misdemeanor arrests (Harcourt 2001).
These disciplinary tactics have become prominent as a purported means to regain control over troubled urban schools. But how do criminal justiceŠoriented disciplinary practices impact the school environment and the educative aims of the institution? What happens when law and order in schools is viewed as the primary means of mitigating disorder?
In this article, I report on an ethnographic study I began in fall 2004 in a Bronx high school I will call UPHS (urban public high school). The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of zero tolerance and order maintenance on the school environment and students’ lives. I observed student behaviors and disciplinary practices several times a week through the course of the year; I interviewed school personnel, law enforcement officials,1 and students; and I conducted a systematic review of occurrence reports, which document disciplinary incidents and interventions. Finally, in order to gain insight into the entire disciplinary process, I accompanied some students to court when they responded to summonses.
What I learned during my year at UPHS was that within the new disciplinary framework, there was a pervasive assumption among administrators and deans (teachers who are assigned disciplinary duties) that law and order was a precondition for educational innovation. It also became clear that order-maintenance policing was not primarily a means of ridding schools of serious violence; it was used, instead, as a general strategy of control.2
Through my review of the occurrence reports, I also found that the majority of incidents in which the police were involved and for which students were punished through the legal system began with a student breaking a school rule, not the law, and these incidents occurred mainly outside the classroom as large numbers of students remained in the hallways and other “public” areas of the building when classes were in session.
FOOTNOTES
1 New York City Police Department (NYPD) police officers from the local precinct, NYPD officers assigned to a special school safety taskforce, and security agents who work under the auspices of the NYPD.
2 According to school and police reports and numerous testimonies from school personnel and students, the school did have fewer incidents of violence than it had had in previous years. However, most people I interviewed attributed this not to the influx of police officers, but to the hard work of the deans and administrators who relied as often as they could on counseling, peer mediation, parental meetings, and other less-punitive disciplinary approaches. Most people I interviewed also attributed the decrease in violence to the removal of over 100 of the most notorious students prior to my entering UPHS. Although this practice likely did reduce the violence at UPHS, it is worth noting that it also served to exclude young people from school and, in reality, it only moved the violence to other schools and/or the streets in which those students ended up.
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