As one could have predicted, social justice ideals have infiltrated the education system even further. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed SB 419 into state law, which amended the suspension ban from grades third through eighth.
The law attempts to justify the ban by listing alternatives to suspensions, however the alternatives equate to zero punishment and a total lack of accountability. Furthermore, the law incentivizes children to continue their misbehavior due to the lack of discipline as negative reinforcement. Lastly, it will disadvantage children with good behavior because most of the class time now will be redirected towards dealing with disruptive and defiant children.
However, the suspension ban seems to go further than just defiant behavior. Going back to 2014, potential racial motivations were addressed by the Obama administration. At the time, the Department of Education distributed a memo stating that suspensions were being issued based on ethnicity.
Furthermore, the memo threatened federal action if the suspension rates of African-American students were not lowered. Florida was the first state to implement policy changes after the memo was distributed by decreasing the amount of in-school arrests being made.
The obvious issue with this rationale is that it assumes students are being punished exclusively because of their race, rather than legitimate behavioral issues at school. While there may be cases of severe racial bias at times, the suggestion that teachers are effectively colluding together to demean African-American students is unsubstantiated and absurd.
The choice to rid punishment encourages a lack of accountability and opens the door for various safety hazards to occur. In the end, the law serves to fracture the education system substantially. As a result of SB 419, misbehavior will be fostered and teachers will have no ability to put a stop to the disruption, which will penalize well-behaved students in the classroom. Once again, the California education system falls further down the rabbit hole of Democratic control.
