Media mentions: Welsh's research sheds light on disparities in school discipline; Love discusses abolitionist teaching on GPB
Welsh’s research sheds light on disparities in school discipline
Clarke County schools are grappling with a discipline issue that’s common among schools across the country: How to stop disproportionately disciplining black students.
It’s a complex issue, said Richard Welsh, a College of Education assistant professor who served this past year as a district-wide professor-in-residence with the Clarke County School District. Welsh recently presented his research to the Board of Education, which showed that while African American males comprise about a quarter of enrollment, those students accounted for slightly more than half of all discipline cases logged between 2014 and 2017.
For students with disabilities, the disparity is even greater—they account for 6 percent of the school population but receive 18 percent of disciplinary actions.
In a recent Athens Banner-Herald article, Welsh described student discipline as a “very complex phenomenon,” noting that schools across the nation are trying to find a middle ground between punitive and restorative methods while also trying to reduce the amount of time students are removed from the classroom.
Read the full story on the Athens Banner-Herald website.
Love discusses abolitionist teaching on GPB
Bettina Love wants to push American public education to the next level.
The associate professor is calling for more radical reforms to the country’s educational system, which she compares to the abolitionist movement.
“I think there’s an idea that white teachers can’t teach black kids, and so they walk in with those perceptions,” Love told Virginia Prescott on GPB’s daily news talk show, “On Second Thought.” “And so, what we try to do in schools of education, and particularly at the University of Georgia, is to challenge them and get them to think outside of the box. You saying you love children is great, but that’s not enough, particularly to teach students of color because you don’t need to just love them—you need to love their culture.”