This 56 page report by the Advancement Project subtitled, How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline is not a surprise but to see it backed with documentation is an eye opener.

From the Advancement Project’s download page:

Test, Punish, and Push Out: How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline.

“Test, Punish, and Push Out” provides an overview of zero-tolerance school discipline and high-stakes testing, how they relate to each other, how laws and policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have made school discipline even more punitive, and the risk faced if these devastating policies are not reformed. The report explores:

* The common origins and ideological roots of zero tolerance and high-stakes testing;
* The current state of zero-tolerance school discipline across the country, including local, state, and national data;
* How high-stakes testing affects students, educators, and schools;
* How zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have become mutually reinforcing, combining to push huge numbers of students out of school; and
* Successful grassroots efforts to eliminate harmful discipline and testing practices.

Reading this report makes one wonder how on earth anyone could call for more regulation of homeschoolers and makes any such effort all that more cynical.

In the following report, school officials of the high school in Mooresville, Indiana have “dismissed” teens from attending school, and have told the kids’ parents they must homeschool the teens.

Mooresville High School officials criticized over student dismissals, 6 January 2007, Reporter-Times, Martinsville, Indiana

Anna Payton, whose two children were students at Mooresville High School, said both were dismissed from school two weeks into the school year for no apparent reason.

Her son was released from high school for “not making the grade,” and the school signed her daughter out at the same time for no other reason than they were signing her son out, she said.

Payton said during a meeting with Mooresville High School principal Chuck Muston, Chris Urbanowski, a guidance counselor at the high school, told Payton her son should be home-schooled. But with an 11-hour-a-day job, Payton said at first, she couldn’t set aside the time necessary to teach her child.

During the meeting, she told Muston and Urbanowski that she wanted her son to attend an alternative school, but they said that “wasn’t even an option.”

The “requirements” for homeschooling appear at the end of the article, but what isn’t mentioned are the requirements of the Indiana Administrative Code, such as compulsory school attendance.

A quick web search pulls up materials about school expulsions.

• Indiana DoE complaint investigation:
  “511 IAC 7-29-6(j) requires the School’s expulsion procedures comply with Indiana statute. IC 208.1-
  5.1-21 requires the signatures of the parent and student in order to effect a valid and voluntary waiver of rights with regard to the expulsion of a student.”
• IC 20-30-8 Chapter 8. Alternative Program for Certain Students
  IC 20-30-8-9 Qualification as eligible student Sec. 9. (a) To qualify as an eligible student, a student must:
  (1) be enrolled in or be eligible to be admitted to grades 6 through 12;
  …
  (4) be likely to benefit:
  (A) academically;
  (B) behaviorally; or
  (C) both academically and behaviorally; from participation in an alternative education program, as jointly determined by the student’s teacher or teachers and principal or principal’s designee, and in consultation with the student’s parent or guardian.

From just this short search, it seems that the Mooresville school hasn’t followed the procedures required by law.  Then again, there is always more to the story than the first report indicates.

posted by Valerie

16 October 2008 update:  original link is no longer active; Indiana opinion: