Educators remove over 3.45 million students from school annually for disciplinary reasons, despite strong evidence that school suspension policies are harmful to students. The research presented in this volume demonstrates that disciplinary policies and practices that schools control directly exacerbate today's profound inequities in educational opportunity and outcomes. Part I explores how suspensions flow along the lines of race, gender, and disability status. Part II examines potential remedies that show great promise, including a district-wide approach in Cleveland, Ohio, aimed at social and emotional learning strategies. Closing the School Discipline Gap is a call for action that focuses on an area in which public schools can and should make powerful improvements, in a relatively short period of time. Contributors include Robert Balfanz, Jamilia Blake, Dewey Cornell, Jeremy D. Finn, Thalia González, Anne Gregory, Daniel J. Losen, David M. Osher, Russell J. Skiba, Ivory A. Toldson “Closing the School Discipline Gap can make an enormous difference in reducing disciplinary exclusions across the country. This book not only exposes unsound practices and their disparate impact on the historically disadvantaged, but provides educators, policymakers, and community advocates with an array of remedies that are proven effective or hold great promise. Educators, communities, and students alike can benefit from the promising interventions and well-grounded recommendations.” —Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University “For over four decades school discipline policies and practices in too many places have pushed children out of school, especially children of color. Closing the School Discipline Gap shows that adults have the power—and responsibility—to change school climates to better meet the needs of children. This volume is a call to action for policymakers, educators, parents, and students.” —Marian Wright Edelman, president, Children’s Defense Fund

Despite well-publicized reports of decreased incidents of violence, the United States remains a leader in rates of homicide, handgun ownership, and school violence. Based on research conducted in high schools and a prison, At Zero Tolerance examines how the United States has responded to violence in its schools and in its streets. In addition to its critique of «get tough» policies initiated in the 1990s, this book offers a means of violence prevention that addresses issues of school restructuring, handgun policy, vocational education, and popular culture. At Zero Tolerance examines violence and violence prevention from the perspectives of policy, institutional reform, and the individuals most affected by the crisis, namely, youths caught in cycles of victimization and victimizing.

Exposing the deeply harmful impact of street-style policing on urban high school students

Why do so many school antiviolence programs backfire? And why do policymakers keep making the same mistakes? The authors of Responding to School Violence examine the pervasive rise of school security measures since the Columbine shootings, highlighting the unintended consequences of policymaking too often shaped by fear and sensationalism. Probing an array of now ubiquitous tactics and programs¿metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, and more¿the authors show how increasingly punitive schoolhouse dynamics negatively affect student safety and even educational experiences. They also share lessons from past mistakes and identify workable, comprehensive approaches for addressing a recurrent social problem.

Did you know your brain has superpowers? Berit Brogaard, PhD, and Kristian Marlow, MA, study people with astonishing talents—memory champions, human echolocators, musical virtuosos, math geniuses, and synesthetes who taste colors and hear faces. But as amazing as these abilities are, they are not mysterious. Our brains constantly process a huge amount of information below our awareness, and what these gifted individuals have in common is that through practice, injury, an innate brain disorder, or even more unusual circumstances, they have managed to gain a degree of conscious access to this potent processing power. The Superhuman Mind takes us inside the lives and brains of geniuses, savants, virtuosos, and a wide variety of ordinary people who have acquired truly extraordinary talents, one way or another. Delving into the neurological underpinnings of these abilities, the authors even reveal how we can acquire some of them ourselves—from perfect pitch and lightning fast math skills to supercharged creativity. The Superhuman Mind is a book full of the fascinating science readers look for from the likes of Oliver Sacks, combined with the exhilarating promise of Moonwalking with Einstein.

This book offers a research and comparison-driven look at the school-to-prison pipeline, its racial dynamics, the connections to mass incarceration, and our flawed educational climate—and suggests practical remedies for change. How is racism perpetuated by the education system, particularly via the "school-to-prison pipeline?" How is the school to prison pipeline intrinsically connected to the larger context of the prison industrial complex as well as the extensive and ongoing criminalization of youth of color? This book uniquely describes the system of policies and practices that racialize criminalization by routing youth of color out of school and towards prison via the school-to-prison pipeline while simultaneously medicalizing white youth for comparable behaviors. This work is the first to consider and link all of the research and data from a sociological perspective, using this information to locate racism in our educational systems; describe the rise of the so-called prison industrial complex; spotlight the concomitant expansion of the "medical-industrial complex" as an alternative for controlling the white and well-off, both adult and juveniles; and explore the significance of media in furthering the white racial frame that typically views people of color as "criminals" as an automatic response. The author also examines the racial dynamics of the school to prison pipeline as documented by rates of suspension, expulsion, and referrals to legal systems and sheds light on the comparative dynamics of the related educational social control of white and middle-class youth in the larger context of society as a whole.

The police are perhaps the most visible representation of government. They are charged with what has been characterized as an "impossible" mandate -- control and prevent crime, keep the peace, provide public services -- and do so within the constraints of democratic principles. The police are trusted to use deadly force when it is called for and are allowed access to our homes in cases of emergency. In fact, police departments are one of the few government agencies that can be mobilized by a simple phone call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are ubiquitous within our society, but their actions are often not well understood. The Oxford Handbook of Police and Policing brings together research on the development and operation of policing in the United States and elsewhere. Accomplished policing researchers Michael D. Reisig and Robert J. Kane have assembled a cast of renowned scholars to provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview of the institution of policing. The different sections of the Handbook explore policing contexts, strategies, authority, and issues relating to race and ethnicity. The Handbook also includes reviews of the research methodologies used by policing scholars and considerations of the factors that will ultimately shape the future of policing, thus providing persuasive insights into why and how policing has developed, what it is today, and what to expect in the future. Aimed at a wide audience of scholars and students in criminology and criminal justice, as well as police professionals, the Handbook serves as the definitive resource for information on this important institution.