Police in the Hallways:
Discipline in an Urban High School
out, furthering her argument that policing in schools becomes a highly negative trend with negative consequences.
Nolan then goes on to explain her main points that show how police officers in inner-city schools are a negative impact are “1) students’ frustration with classroom experiences and disciplinary practices (and dysfunction), 2) student perceptions of police in their neighborhoods and popular local histories of police abuse and community relations, 3) the development of an intimacy between students and officers due to daily contact, 4) some students’ compulsion to maintain a tough posture in front of their peers, and 5) students’ sense of indignation, brought about by their sense of injustice and their desire for a different kind of school experience” (Nolan 74). These five examples, driven farther by specific examples that Nolan is able to draw out from her own personal research in the Bronx high school she monitors. This information, coupled with actual accounts, allows the reader to understand that there is something deeper going on within the school systems.
Nolan is able to separate the way school systems treat their students from how the penal system treats its prisoners, and then she is able to combine the two thought processes. The clear separation Nolan notes accomplishes nothing more than show that students are subjected to the same treatment as criminals. Her in-depth research at a Bronx high school solidifies her arguments as to why zero-tolerance in schools can steadily backfire. Nolan is able to utilize her personal research in ways that can allow the reader to understand how the difficulties within the public school system, primarily in inner-city schools, are part of a broader, more significant problem.
By: Sterline Simcox
mcoNolan is able to separate the way school systems treat their students from how the penal system treats its prisoners, and then she is able to combine the two thought processes. The clear separation Nolan notes accomplishes nothing more than show that students are subjected to the same treatment as criminals. Her in-depth research at a Bronx high school solidifies her arguments as to why zero-tolerance in schools can steadily backfire. Nolan is able to utilize her personal research in ways that can allow the reader to understand how the difficulties within the public school system, primarily in inner-city schools, are part of a broader, more significant problemx
Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School by Kathleen Nolan is a detailed look at discipline in urban schools and how said discipline effects the students. Nolan begins her well-written book off with examples of how students, primarily minority students and students with disabilities, get the brunt of biased policing in schools. It is clear that police force in schools shows the “nation’s acquiescence to police intervention as a response to normal student behavior” (Nolan 20). Nolan realizes early on that inner-city schools with high rates of poverty and low academic performance that are policed during school hours will most likely “take on, with the same intensity, the characteristics of a penal institution” (Nolan 20). She continues to drive her point forward by explaining the social changes from the 1960s, when minorities were finally given a true voice in society in the United States, into the 1970s and 1980s, when “inner-city neighborhoods were ravaged by the changes in economy, deep cuts in social services, a growing drug trade, and the subsequent rise in street violence” (Nolan 23). These rapid changes within the society of the United States allow Nolan to then begin to speak of the changes within the school systems in and around the inner-city
Following her outside research, Nolan begins explaining the changes within the school system nation-wide that began with the landmark publication A Nation at Risk, published during the Reagan administration. After this publication, United States schools began to push change after change in the school systems, attempting to better the system as a whole. The report stated how “the U.S. economy would be in peril if the nation did not dramatically improve academic standards and teacher quality” (Nolan 27). Nolan explains then how the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations implemented changes within the operation of the school system. The significance of the changes are somewhat lost in the book at this point, but she is able to draw her conclusions back together within the rest of her book
Nolan moves on to the implementation of the “zero-tolerance” policy in schools. She uses outside research to show that the attempts at a “zero-tolerance” policy negatively affects the students, and in turn, negatively affect the school system.
.Nolan backs this up by noting “The U.S. Department of Education projected that there were roughly 250,000 more students suspended in OSS or out-of-school in 2006-2007 than there were during the 2002-2003 school year” and that this “zero-tolerance school discipline disproportionately targets students with special needs and black and Latino/a students, especially boys” (Nolan 30). The author realizes that these ‘targeted’ students will have a higher chance of dropping out, furthering her argument that policing in schools becomes a highly negative trend with negative consequences.
by Sterline Simcox
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Book Review