A 14-year-old student was stabbed in the chest with a knife on May 2 at Friendship Academy of Science and Technology in Baltimore, the Baltimore Sun reports. A 17-year-old student was arrested in connection with the stabbing, which school officials said happened after an altercation between the two students.
The victim was reported to be in stable condition later that night at Johns Hopkins, where he was being held for observation. Names were not released for either student.
Last month, a student was stabbed at Patterson High School in Baltimore, and in March, a Philadelphia student punched a school official, knocking him unconscious.
We don’t know if the stabbings signal a growing trend toward violence, but there’s an eerie sameness about the latest wave of violence: When three Baltimore high school students are killed within 10 days of each other, described as star students, good friends, and the like, questions start to be asked. We mourn the loss and feel empathy for the families and friends, but what can we do?
Provide an education, write three charter school developers in the Sun:
We believe education has the power to make a lasting difference. We should all be alarmed that, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam, only 7 percent of black boys in Baltimore City schools are reading at grade level in 8th grade. Even worse, in Maryland, 57 percent of black males are currently graduating from high school compared to 81 percent for white males. Hundreds of black boys drop out of Baltimore high schools each year. They enter the adult world unable to read and comprehend the daily newspaper or to find a job that supports the cost of food and shelter.
We noted a good piece of investigative journalism on the part of the Baltimore Sun regarding increasing workers’ compensation claims against the public schools, especially in Baltimore City, where students are assaulting teachers without fear of punishment. It has been hypothesized that a decreasing tendency on the part of school officials to suspend students has led to an increase in violence in our schools.
Some of the discipline changes were encouraged by the Maryland State Board of Education and were intended to give students fewer suspensions out of school, keeping them in class for more instruction time and, it is hoped, a stronger path toward high school graduation.
But taking away suspension as a possible punishment, as two identical bills (SB3004 and HB4655) now in the Illinois General Assembly might do, could lead to an increase in violence of the sort reported in this story, and many school leaders, especially principals, don’t support the proposed policy changes.
“We sure appreciate the premise that this legislation comes from—that there are disparities when you look at suspensions and expulsions of minority vs white students,” said Jason Leahy, executive director of the Illinois Principals Association, in a weekly podcast. “But we don’t feel like the appropriate action here, from a legislative and policy perspective, is to basically handcuff school leaders’ ability to have the tools that are needed to keep schools safe and to take measures that are necessary when it comes to disciplining students.”
According to IPA, groups are now working with proponents of the legislation to develop discipline strategies that would address the disparity concerns while still allowing school officials to keep schools safe through the use of appropriate punishment, including suspension, expulsion, or alternative placement.
I hope that works, because without effective discipline in the schools, violence against teachers and fellow students appears to increase. A few shootings and stabbings don’t establish a trend, of course, but nor do they suggest decreasing suspensions for African-American boys will reduce the level of violence.
