The Case for Students' Rights: Historicizing School Punishment Through Punitive and "Benevolent" Exclusionary School Policies

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Education and the Carceral State

Abstract

Beginning in April 1968, The Bureau for the Protection of Student Rights in New York City began gathering and distributing data on the problem of student rights finding that Black and Brown students’ rights had been violated by a subset of local practices, and federal programs. Black and Brown students were excluded from educational institutions through suspension, transfer, attendance, and discharge policies. The Bureau also found that even “benevolent” federal programs like Title I, designed to support compensatory education efforts also contributed to “racial exclusion.” Adding to the expanding historiography of school discipline this study examines how local and federal forces contributed to an expanding “school to prison nexus.” Throughout the 1960s and 70s.

Author

• Mahasan Violet Chaney, Brown University