MAPLEWOOD/SOUTH ORANGE — Civil rights organizations filed a complaint Oct. 9 with the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights urging an investigation into the South Orange-Maplewood School District’s practices of tracking and school discipline. According to a release from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the SOMSD practices of tracking, which groups students with similar achievement level in classes together, and methods of discipline affect students differently based on race and disability status.
The complaint was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU-NJ and the Center for Civil Rights Remedies of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. The groups charge that the school district’s tracking and discipline practices disproportionately confine students of color to lower-level classes and punish students of color and students with disabilities to a greater degree.
“These problems are all too common in school districts across the country, and the numbers in South Orange-Maplewood are particularly troubling,” ACLU-NJ senior staff attorney Alexander Shalom said in the release. “We’ve been meeting with officials from South Orange-Maplewood in the hopes that they address this issue and become a partner in building a more democratic, equitable learning environment for all children.”
The complaint, brought under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, outlines the scope of the disparate impact allegedly wrought by the district’s policies and recommendations to remedy these alleged inequalities. It says that the policies and practices in effect impact different populations unfairly, even if those policies have a neutral intent.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal funding, while Section 504 is a federal law designed to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Education.
“Our purpose with this complaint is to improve rather than vilify the district,” the complaint reads. “We believe that SOMSD has the capacity to make substantial changes that will dramatically reduce the use of out-of-school suspensions, while maintaining safe and orderly learning environments and improving achievement for all of its students and advancing its goal of ensuring that its students of color achieve the same level as its white students.”
Despite other recent challenges, the school district remains committed to providing a quality education for all its students and, while aware of some inequalities, has been working to correct them, according to Acting Superintendent James Memoli.
“While we cannot comment specifically on active litigation, we can assure the community that SOMSD is fully committed to our core values that ‘demography should not be destiny, academically or otherwise,’ and that ‘all students deserve the opportunity to achieve their fullest potential,’” Memoli told the News-Record earlier this week via email. “We have taken many steps over the past seven years to address the academic achievement gap, and while we have seen some progress, there is much more work in front of us.”
The complaint urges the OCR to encourage the school district to enter into a resolution agreement with the complainants.
“In fact, preliminary discussions with SOMSD suggest that they may be amenable to such a solution,” the complaint reads.
“We are eager to partner with anyone who can help us accelerate our work to achieve our mission ‘to prepare each and every student, regardless of demographic or socioeconomic background, for postsecondary educational success,’” Memoli said.
While local officials and residents often applaud the local schools for their diversity, ACLU-NJ cites the SOMSD as being one of the N.J. school districts with the highest racial disparities in tracking and student discipline. While white students make up slightly less than half of the student body, 70 percent of the higher-level classes are filled with white students, while 70 percent of the lower-level classes are filled with black students, according to the release.
“Researchers know two things: tracking provides no concrete benefit and even harms students, and out-of-school suspension should be treated as a last resort because of its disruptive effects on both children and the learning environment,” Courtney Bowie, an attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, said in the release. “The small investment of time and resources for South Orange-Maplewood to overhaul these two conventions will pay off in the form of more engaged students who perform at higher levels than their peers in other schools.”
According to the release, in the 2011-2012 school year, black students had a 15.9 percent chance of being suspended, compared to the overall suspension risk of 10.7 percent. Black students were also more than 4.5 times more likely to face out-of-school suspension than their white peers, while Hispanic students were slightly more than twice as likely to face out-of-school suspension compared to their white peers. Additionally, despite federal and state mandates requiring support and accommodation for students with disabilities, these students are more than 2.5 times as likely to face out-of-school suspension as their peers. Independent of disability status, black students have a 16.1 percent suspension rate versus white students’ rate of 2.7 percent.
“We hope that our action will prompt the district to replace its detrimental reliance on exclusion with methods that will improve the school climate for all children and dramatically reduce the large discipline gap along the lines of race and disability status documented in the complaint,” Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, said in the release. “Ultimately, anti-discrimination law requires the rejection of the status quo in the South Orange-Maplewood School District. All students, regardless of their race or disability status, must be afforded access to a rigorous curriculum in a safe and supportive environment. By closing the access and discipline gaps we believe the district will also make strides in closing the achievement gap.”
Among several recommendations to be included in the proposed resolution agreement between the school district and the complainants, the complaint proposes some of the following steps for reform: Replace tracking with a standard curriculum for students of all levels, with supplementary instruction for students who need it; reserve out-of-school suspension for only the most extreme cases of harm, focusing instead on dealing with behavior directly; and partner with experts, community members and the complainants to reduce the adverse impact on students.