[00:00.00]The Obama administration made a big move today on the question of school discipline policies around the country. 
[00:06.85]It issued new guidelines to urge school administrators to ensure they are not being overly zealous with strict punishments for students 
[00:14.91]that are sometimes called zero tolerance rules.
[00:17.88]The Departments of Education and Justice warned schools to make sure they are being fair and equitable and that they are complying with civil rights laws.
[00:26.81]Two years ago, the NewsHour's Tom Bearden looked into a story in Texas 
[00:31.15]that was drawing international attention to the unintended consequences of such policies, often for minority students.
[00:38.93]Seventeen-year-old Diane Tran is still upset after spending 24 hours in jail for missing class.
[00:47.51]The 11th grade honor student in Willis, Texas, was locked up for contempt of court after being warned by a justice of the peace to stop skipping school.
[00:56.81]The judge who issued that warning in April sentenced her to jail last month when the absences continued.
[01:02.47]If you let one of them run loose, what are you going to do with the rest of them? Let them go too?
[01:08.24]But after Houston's KHOU reported her story, the international spotlight fell on Tran and Texas' school truancy laws, 
[01:16.19]laws that were originally crafted in the mid-19th century to keep kids in class
[01:20.55] and prevent parents from pulling them out to work in the fields and then later in factories.
[01:25.60]But for students like Tran, life is more complicated than it used to be. 
[01:30.05]She is a straight-A student who holds down two jobs in order to help support her younger sister and another sibling in college.
[01:37.44]Well, the judge had warned me about missing too many days of school. 
[01:41.28]But I just couldn't help it.
[01:43.47]Tran says that schedule led to more than 10 unexcused absences in six months, 
[01:48.66]which under Texas law can warrant criminal Class C misdemeanor charges, fines up to $500 and potentially jail time.
[01:57.33]After the news spread, the judge ended up removing the citation from her record. 
[02:01.72]But the case sparked a new debate about the merits of criminalizing student behavior.
[02:07.01]The new guidance calls for clearer distinctions about the role of safety personnel 
[02:11.86]and making sure school administrators handle routine discipline problems, instead of turning them over to law enforcement.
[02:18.64]Hari Sreenivasan, in our New York studio, explores the potential impact of the guidelines.
[02:24.69]We get two views now.
[02:26.02]Sherrilyn Ifill is president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 
[02:30.43]And Chester Finn is president of the Fordham Institute, which focuses on the reform of elementary and secondary education.
[02:35.39]So, Ms. Ifill, let me start with you.
[02:37.02]How big of a problem is this? What is the administration reacting to with these guidelines?
[02:41.38]Well, the administration today really took the important step of recognizing what is a widespread problem.
[02:48.07]What we saw in the clip is just the tip of the iceberg, not only in Texas, but in states throughout this country. 
[02:53.93]We litigated a case in Bryan, Tex., where students can get a Class C misdemeanor ticket for using profanity in high school. 
[03:03.61]And this essentially then leaves students with a record and puts students on that school-to-prison pipeline that we talk about.
[03:10.76]This whole idea of discipline, of changing what used to be infractions 
[03:16.04]that got you sent to the vice principal's office and criminalizing them has essentially introduced the criminal justice system into our schools, 
[03:23.98]to the detriment of our children. And so what the administration really did today was to acknowledge this widespread problem, 
[03:30.92]to take responsibility for investigating the results of these problems, 
[03:35.52]and really trying to provide a framework for schools to think about how they can find alternative means 
[03:41.37]to deal with what are real issues, discipline problems in the schools, to train police -- 
[03:46.92]to train school police, to train teachers, to train counselors to know how to deal with the problems 
[03:51.91]that cause students to misbehave in school or, in the case of the student we saw, to miss school.
[03:58.38]Mr. Finn, what about this idea that there is this school-to-prison pipeline, 
[04:01.60]and we are overcriminalizing disciplinary behavior which could have been dealt inside the school?
[04:04.77]A lot of it can be dealt win inside the school. 
[04:09.31]There are also a lot of pipelines into prison, not just from schools. 
[04:12.83]There's poverty. There's gangs. There's neighborhoods. There's bad parenting. There are any number of things that contribute to prison.
[04:20.44]And if all that the administration had done was to offer school guidelines on 
[04:26.23]how to handle discipline better, this probably would be a positive step. 
[04:30.39]But there's a huge iron fist inside this glove. 
[04:34.39]And it's in the joint guidance from the Justice Department and the Education Department, 
[04:37.98]saying if you punish some kids more than you punish other kids and cannot prove that you didn't intend to discriminate, 
[04:45.13]we're going to come after you and ding you as schools or school systems.
[04:48.79]This is fundamentally a civil rights enforcement step, of the kind that is ultimately going to weaken discipline in our schools, 
[04:57.76]at a very time when things like Newtown ought to have us seeking better order in our schools, rather than discouraging school systems from enforcing discipline.
[05:09.73]Ms. Ifill, are there two different types of violence that we should be targeting?
[05:13.30]Absolutely.
[05:13.92]It's difficult to imagine how discipline in the schools would have changed what happened in Newtown. 
[05:19.99]We're talking about out-of-school suspension for children who disrupt the class or 
[05:24.08]who are using profanity or who are called insubordinate.
[05:27.55]In Maryland in the 2011-2012 school year, 675 kindergarten students were given out-of-school suspensions 
[05:37.77]for infractions like using foul language or not respecting the teacher. This is what we're really talking about.
[05:44.74]The school shootings are absolute tragedies and absolutely have to be dealt with and addressed in terms of safety. 
[05:51.35]But the issue we're talking about is discipline as it relates to student within the schools. 
[05:56.73]And we shouldn't overreact or misguide our reaction to the tragedy that happened in Newtown 
[06:02.29]by tightening the vice of discipline in the schools and criminalizing discipline in the schools.
[06:08.74]And that's why these guidelines are so welcome. It's absolutely true this is a civil rights enforcement issue. 
[06:13.50]And it is an important issue, because the disproportionate burden of this harsh criminalization of discipline falls on minority students, 
[06:21.35]falls on African-American students, falls on Latino students, and as we saw in the clip that you showed, falls on Asian-American students.
[06:27.59]So, some of what is suggested is in the guidelines and suggested by the Department of Justice 
[06:33.12]today is the training for school personnel to even understand how they're doing what they do. 
[06:38.28]They're not going to come in and sue the school districts. 
[06:40.64]The first step they say explicitly in the guidelines is to work with schools to try and find a voluntary means of using alternative measures to deal with discipline problems.
[06:51.29]Mr. Finn, what about the notion that Secretary Duncan impressed upon everyone over and over again, 
[06:56.43]that they're looking for locally developed approaches, that there isn't one blanket policy? Is it possible?
[07:02.09]Well, what they have done is to discourage locally developed remedies 
[07:07.53]by setting forth so many norms and requirements and documentation obligations and data gathering requirements, 
[07:17.28]that the practical effect of this in our schools and school systems is going to be to deter school systems from developing workable discipline policies 
[07:28.30]that ensure that the kids who do behave are going to be able to sit in orderly classrooms and listen to -- hear their teacher and do their homework.
[07:37.56]So I think Arne Duncan's words are exactly right. But I think that the effect of his and the attorney general's actions is going to be precisely the opposite.
[07:48.15]Ms. Ifill, what about this idea that we have heard from teachers saying, you know what, 
[07:52.75]sometimes getting a student out of the class is the only way that I can try and retain any semblance of order in the class, 
[07:58.53]that -- and really would prefer to outsource this, I'm not a security professional, I can't deal with all of this?
[08:04.80]You know, in cases of violence, no one is suggesting that you don't need school police. In fact, we're not suggesting you shouldn't have them.
[08:11.08]There is a difference between a student who is violent and a student who uses profanity or a student who can't sit in their seat or a student 
[08:18.30]who doesn't show up for class. And, in fact, actually, the very opposite happened of what Mr. Finn said. 
[08:24.65]In fact, Arne Duncan and the administration based a lot of their ideas for the guidelines today on the experience of what happened in Baltimore City, 
[08:32.38]where organizations like OSI Baltimore and the Advancement Project worked with the school system to try and change the school discipline code to get rid of out-of-school suspensions.
[08:42.86]And a lot of the success is in Baltimore. That is the reason why they held the announcement there today, really impressed the administration. 
[08:49.66]And that's why they have empathized the idea of local changes, 
[08:53.27]because they were impressed with what happened in one American city that figured out how to bring down out-of-school suspensions by working with the school district.
[09:01.00]Mr. Finn, what do you think could attack some of these intense disparities even between states or even within districts for why some schools 
[09:10.40]and some students are suspended so much more often than others?
[09:12.96]Well, what won't attack them is 20 pages of gotcha guidance from the Justice Department and the Education Department, 
[09:22.33]which is part of what the administration released today.
[09:25.93]What will tackle them is both education of education personnel and school safety personnel -- 
[09:32.51]there is no doubt about that -- and advice as to what a good discipline policy looks like, all of which is excellent. 
[09:38.18]But at the end of the day, it's the people that run our 50,000-school -- sorry -- 50,000-student school district that have to come up with these policies.
[09:49.39]And it's the principals of schools with 800 or 1,800 kids in them that have to know how to enforce these. 
[09:55.61]And fear of Uncle Sam is not going to make them do a better job. It is going to chill their ability to do any job at all in this realm.
[10:06.32]Chester Finn and Sherrilyn Ifill, thanks so much for your time.
[10:08.25]Thank you.
[10:08.82]Thank you.