Massachusetts public schools maintain a policy that casts out students and sets them up for failure, yet for some reason they have been largely immune to scrutiny. It is a sign of the sad shape of some schools that it took outside attorneys at Suffolk University’s Juvenile Justice Center to stand up for these troubled and often abused or underprivileged students expelled by the commonwealth’s high schools with no chance for re-enrollment.
There is no better way to turn confused youths into incurable criminals than to rob them of an education. Without an actual high school diploma, an adult’s job prospects in today’s market tend to be worth almost nothing, increasing the risk for them to turn to a life of crime. The burden these adults place on society surely exceeds the cost of providing them a remedial education while they are still young.
Many students were also expelled for the wrong reasons. In the hyper-sensitive climate created after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, school officials have been given free rein to define any threatening behavior as a danger to the student body. While this alertness has undoubtedly protected students in many instances, it has ruined the lives of others who have fallen victim to administrative overreaction. Under the current rules, a student can be kicked out for using a shoe as a weapon or for a felony conviction of writing graffiti.
Even with cases of violence, not all expelled students are potential criminals. Many students can be kicked out of school for minor disciplinary problems or threats made jokingly, all at a principal’s discretion. Children younger than 13 account for at least a quarter of students expelled, according to the Suffolk attorney Isabel Raskin — children too young to understand the consequences of their actions.
The educational system is supposed to exist to serve these very children. Those too young to know right from wrong should be guided by the state, not cast out as someone else’s problem. Regardless of whether the state Department of Education chooses to acknowledge it, the truth remains that private schools and boot camps can never serve such an at-risk population as well as the commonwealth itself. Many will simply drop out of school for a life on the streets.
Devoting special programs to these children is not a high-minded social experiment; districts in several states, including Texas, New York and New Jersey set aside entire schools for expelled or otherwise problematic students. Many separate these children into different level schools depending on the seriousness of students’ offenses, so that mild troublemakers do not become hardened by traumatic experiences among a population of worse offenders. In a state where violent adults regularly make the news for their lenient sentences, the least the Department of Education can do is give errant students a second chance before they turn into worse offenders.