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For Students of Color, It May Hurt to Go to SchoolAfrican-American students are referred to special education at a rate over two times the national average and over three times the rate at which white students are referred to special education programs. They comprise 36.9 percent of the special education population, but only 16.8 percent of the entire U.S. student population. On August 10, 2009, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch (HRW) released Impairing Education, a report that reveals the disproportionate use of corporal punishment on students with disabilities in our public schools. Corporal punishment, or the use of physical force with the intent to punish, is legal in 20 states and includes, but is not limited to, paddling, hitting, pinching, slapping, forceful grabbing, throwing, spanking, and dragging. Although corporal punishment should not be used on any student, its effect on students with disabilities can be especially damaging. This report builds upon a prior ACLU/HRW report, A Violent Education, that discussed the disproportionate use of corporal punishment on students of color. A Violent Education raised concerns about the disproportionate rates at which students of color are subjected to corporal punishment, violating their right to nondiscriminatory access to education. The disproportionate referral of students of color to special education programs may raise further concerns for racial justice advocates about the use of corporal punishment with students of color. Corporal punishment should be banned from use on all students. It can cause serious injury and lasting psychological damage. Research shows that the practice is also largely ineffective in maintaining safe and productive learning environments. Rather, positive behavioral supports (PBS), which teach children why what they did was wrong and reward positive behaviors, have been proven to be the most effective behavioral management strategies in the classroom. The use of PBS has been shown to reduce school discipline referrals, support improved academic outcomes, and improve perceptions of school safety. Lawmakers are beginning to recognize the critical importance of PBS programs. Recently, Representative Phil Hare (D-Ill.) introduced the Positive Behavior for Safe and Effective Schools Act (H.R. 2597), a bill that would enable schools to use Title I funds to implement evidence-based approaches, such as PBS. It is important that this law is passed to replace ineffective, punitive approaches to discipline in favor of research-based, effective PBS programs. Until corporal punishment is banned throughout the United States, there are domestic civil rights laws that may help advocates combat the disproportionate use of corporal punishment on students of color. Using corporal punishment more often with students of color than with white students is prohibited by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Acts if the discrepancy has resulted from intentional discrimination. Corporal punishment is already prohibited by 107 countries, 30 U.S. states, and international human rights law. It's time for all children in the United States to be free from this physically and psychologically harmful practice.
Stop Beating Students with Disabilities in Schools(Originally published in Huffington Post.) In the 2006 – 2007 school year, nearly quarter of a million school children were subjected to corporal punishment in public schools. Impairing Education, a report released yesterday by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, finds that students with disabilities — who have a right to appropriate, inclusive educational programs that give them the opportunity to thrive — are nonetheless subjected to this violent discipline at disproportionately high rates. Corporal punishment — from paddling to beating to throwing children into walls or floors — is routine in public schools in many parts of the United States. Impairing Education documents many such cases. No student should be subjected to these abusive forms of discipline, but students with disabilities, who already face extra challenges, can be particularly vulnerable to physical or psychological harm from these punishments. Anna M.’s son, who has autism, was seven years old when he was punished in school. She told me about an experience at his elementary school: I’m in the front office ... They bring [my son] into the room. His nose is beet red. He lifts up his shirt sleeve, I get a glimpse of scratches all up his arm. I got overwhelmed, I couldn’t focus ... I wanted to get my son to the doctor. I get him home and I take off his clothes. He was marked, top of his arms, under his arms, down his torso. He had a busted lip, which I hadn’t noticed at first. He said, “they made me wash the blood off before I saw you.”Corporal punishment causes pain, humiliation, and in some cases deep bruising or other serious injury; it also can have long-lasting psychological consequences. Students with disabilities may see their underlying conditions worsened as a result. Furthermore, it creates a violent, degrading school environment in which all students — and particularly students with disabilities — may struggle to succeed. Anna M.’s son has changed after he was restrained and beaten. He now struggles with anger, has had nightmares, is reluctant to leave his mother’s side and fears running into the person that administered his punishment. Anna said, “I was afraid for his life, to be honest. He was 52 pounds, or maybe even less, at this point.” The use of corporal punishment on children with disabilities violates the right to freedom from cruel, degrading treatment and violence guaranteed to them under international human rights law. Children with disabilities have the right to an inclusive education, yet corporal punishment impinges on this right and creates barriers to their success. There are positive, nonviolent approaches to school discipline that have been proven to lead to safe environments in which children can learn. Positive behavioral supports teach children why what they did was wrong and gives them the tools necessary to improve their behavior. The staff in our schools must be trained on how to discipline children effectively and humanely. No child should be hit, especially the most vulnerable. Tags: children's rights, corporal punishment, Human Rights Program
Ohio Bans Corporal PunishmentWhen Ohio's children return to school in just a few weeks, they'll finally have long-overdue protection from corporal punishment (or "paddling") in their public schools. Last Wednesday, the Ohio legislature passed a ban on corporal punishment as part of the state's biennial budget. With Gov. Ted Strickland's signature, Ohio became the 30th state to ban corporal punishment. You can send Gov. Strickland a message supporting this move here: Corporal punishment is still legal in 20 states. It typically takes the form of students beaten with a wooden "paddle" or board about 1 ½ feet long, 6 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. The ACLU has interviewed students who were beaten for a wide range of misbehavior, from being late, to fighting. Students can be seriously injured by this punishment. You can see more in our report, A Violent Education. Now that corporal punishment has been banned in Ohio, children there will be able to learn in safe, secure environments. Corporal punishment is ineffective and abusive; it discourages children from learning and has been linked to higher drop-out rates. Better methods of disciplining children, including Positive Behavior Intervention and Support, provide safe, secure schools where children can learn. The ACLU congratulates Ohio in this important move for securing a better future for its children. Tags: children's rights, corporal punishment, Human Rights Program
Stop Beating Children in Schools(Originally posted on Daily Kos.) With state legislatures back in session, we're renewing the fight to take corporal punishment out of public schools. There's a bill pending in Ohio to do just that. Here's our letter supporting this crucial step to protect Ohio's kids. In recent months we've also seen bills introduced in other states limiting corporal punishment, making it harder for schools to beat children. Click here to find out if paddling is legal and prevalent in your state. While we hope all states will follow suit, paddling can also be banned school district by school district. More and more districts are adopting discipline policies that throw out the paddle and support effective learning instead. For instance, in recent months, the school districts in Marfa and Aldine in Texas and Muskogee, Oklahoma, have debated banning or limiting corporal punishment, like many other small districts. Meanwhile, Jackson Public School (JPS) District, one of the biggest districts in Mississippi, recently upheld its ban on paddling. Click here to see our letters to JPS. What can you do? We've put together a "toolkit" for parents that we published with the Our Children, the National PTA magazine. Parents and PTAs can take the lead in campaigns to change school policies. Even if you don't live in a school district that paddles kids, you can help. Parents can write letters to their state legislatures, objecting to laws that permit schools to paddle, and advocating for safe, nonviolent discipline in schools. New funding from the federal stimulus package can also help. The Department of Education can allocate funding to school districts that want to implement positive behavior discipline systems that teach kids why what they did was wrong and what they can do better. Positive behavior systems are much more effective than paddling; they produce safe, secure classrooms where kids can effectively learn. The Southern Poverty Law Center has more on using federal money for positive behavior. What’s more, the right to dignity — one of the founding principles of human rights — protects children from abusive or discriminatory school discipline practices. U.S. schools should implement effective, positive discipline systems, so that children’s human rights are protected and so that every student can maximize his or her potential. To learn more about the ACLU’s work to end corporal punishment, visit: www.aclu.org/corporalpunishment Tags: children's rights, corporal punishment, Human Rights Program
End Abusive, Discriminatory Discipline in Schools: Give All Students a Chance to ThriveMinority students in schools across the U.S. are not getting a fair chance – in part because they are more likely to be subjected to abusive, degrading disciplinary tactics ranging from overpolicing to corporal punishment. Facing these and other obstacles, minority students are more likely to drop out of school and end up in the criminal justice system. The ACLU has been fighting this trend in the U.S. The ACLU had the chance to raise this issue in an international setting: at the first United Nations Forum on Minority Issues, which opened yesterday in Geneva. The Forum was established by Independent Expert Gay McDougall (herself an American who has spent years fighting for racial justice) to examine conditions for minority students in schools across the world. This year, the Forum focuses on access to education for minority students, understanding that all children need a fair, equal start in life in order to thrive and contribute to their societies later. Dennis Parker, director of the Racial Justice Program at the ACLU and an established expert on minority access to education in the U.S., was asked to speak at the Forum. Dennis spoke yesterday about abusive discipline practices faced by minority students. For instance, some policies are outwardly discriminatory: African American, Latino, Native American and other students of color are subjected to different punishment than white students for engaging in the same behavior. Other policies appear race-neutral but are felt more harshly by minority students. For example, corporal punishment, still widely used in a number of states in the U.S., appears to be inflicted disproportionately against students of color, is counter to international legal standards and adversely affects the learning environment for all children whether or not they are recipients of the actual punishment. International human rights standards such as those discussed at the Forum can help minority children in the U.S. get a fair chance at a decent education. Human rights law prohibits discrimination in all levels of education. What's more, the right to dignity – one of the founding principles of human rights – protects children from abusive or discriminatory school discipline practices. U.S. schools – and indeed, all schools worldwide – should implement effective, positive discipline systems, so that children's human rights are protected and so that every student can maximize his or her potential. For more information, read the ACLU's submission to the Forum on Minority Access to Education in the United States. Tags: children's rights, corporal punishment, Human Rights Program
Allegations of Torture of Two Teen Detainees at Guantánamo(Originally posted on DailyKos.) Two hearings on Wednesday concerned the cases of two of the youngest prisoners of Guantánamo Bay, Omar Khadr and Mohammed Jawad, who were both teenagers when they were captured by U.S. forces. On Wednesday, pre-trial hearings resumed in the case of Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old when he was shot in the back and captured by the U.S. A legal advisor to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs who is permitted one-on-one "welfare visits" with him tells me Khadr, who is now 21, is laboring through the Ontario seventh- and eighth-grade school curriculum she brings him. Khadr's defense attorneys put the issue of Khadr's age at the time of his capture front-and-center. His lawyers argued that because he was only 15 when U.S. imprisonment and interrogations commenced, Khadr requires a full clinical evaluation by independent—not military—experts on juvenile psychology who can assess the reliability of statements extracted from him and the psychological impact of abusive interrogations and coercive conditions of confinement on a teenager. Khadr's defense attorney, Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, said that there are significant segments of Khadr's time at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan that Khadr won't discuss with his attorneys, who believe he may be suffering psychological trauma from mistreatment at the hands of U.S. interrogators there. They hope that a trained clinical psychologist will be able to assess whether Khadr's mental state is consistent with his allegations of torture at Bagram. Khadr's allegations? We don't know much about them, since the government has classified a nine-page affidavit in which Khadr describes his mistreatment in Afghanistan. We do know that Khadr has claimed that he was repeatedly interrogated while he was in excruciating pain, hooded and menaced by barking dogs, and threatened with rape. Although prosecutor Maj. Jeffrey Groharing urged the commission to "give very little weight to an accused terrorist's claims of abuse" and noted that Khadr's claims were investigated and unsubstantiated, recent revelations suggest that the investigation of Khadr's allegations of mistreatment at Bagram prison was patently inadequate. The military intelligence unit involved in interrogations of Khadr at Bagram prison was the same unit implicated in the deaths of two detainees at that prison, and U.S. investigators later recommended that 27 members of that unit be criminally prosecuted. And yet still the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) found it appropriate to find Khadr's claims of mistreatment unsubstantiated. All this begs the question of what continued effects of mistreatment Khadr could possibly exhibit after the fact. Video footage of then-17-year-old Khadr's interrogation by Canada's Air Force Office of Special Investigations released a month ago provides the first glimpse of an interrogation at Guantánamo Bay. The video, along with an interrogation report (PDF) written a year after the footage was taken, raise concerns not only about the teenager's mental state at the time of both interrogations, but about the conduct of the interrogators as well. Also on Wednesday was the military commission hearing of Afghan national Mohammed Jawad, whose case brought new revelations about the "Frequent Flyer" sleep deprivation program, a program we recently learned was used by the Chinese on American soldiers during the Korean War. Jawad, who was 16 or 17 years old at the time of his capture, is not accused of any links to al Qaeda or the Taliban. As recently as a week ago, reports suggested that at least 17 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have been subjected to the program. But Maj. Jason Orlich, a creator of Guantánamo Bay's "incentives" program that uses long-term sleep deprivation as a punishment for those who misbehave or fail to cooperate, testified that nearly all of the 350 to 400 prisoners held in two Guantánamo Bay prison camps were subject to the program, which entails waking the prisoners, shackling them, and moving them to a different cell along with all their belongings. Maj. Orlich was reluctant to specify the frequency of the moves, but testified that three-hour intervals "would not be abnormal." Maj. Orlich also revealed that the Frequent Flyer Program was Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), although it did not appear in writing in the SOPs of that time—begging the question of what other detainee treatment policies were omitted from the written records. According to Maj. Orlich, Guantánamo Bay leadership was aware that the Frequent Flyer Program was in use, and the program was a routine included in what the military calls its "daily synchronization matrix." Maj. Orlich also said that the Frequent Flyer Program was ongoing at the time of his departure from Guantánamo Bay in April 2005, and he had never heard of any order to stop the program. This is despite previous government claims that the program had been discontinued in March 2004. The fact the program continued at Guantánamo Bay even after it was officially banned isn't exactly news: On July 10, Jawad's lawyers announced that prison logs reveal that the Frequent Flyer program was used on Jawad after it was "officially" banned at Guantánamo Bay. According to Jawad's lawyers, in 2004 the military subjected Jawad to two weeks of sleep deprivation in which Jawad was moved 112 times in 14 days. The Frequent Flyer program was used on Jawad only months after his Christmas Day suicide attempt in 2003. (Around the same time in July 2004, Canada disclosed a document (PDF) in which Canada's foreign intelligence director confirms that a similar Frequent Flyer Program was used on Omar Khadr for three weeks to "soften" him for interrogations by Canadian agents in March 2004—when he was 17. Notably, the Canadian judge found that this treatment of Khadr constituted torture.) When asked Wednesday whether he thought it was humane to move prisoners every three hours, eight times a day, 112 times in two weeks, Maj. Orlich replied, after a lengthy pause, that yes, he believed it was humane. I wonder what Maj. Orlich was thinking during that pause. Tags: children's rights, corporal punishment, Guantanamo Dispatch, Human Rights Program
U.N. Grills U.S. on Detention of Accused Child Soldiers in Iraq and GuantánamoToday here at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child reviewed the United States for its compliance with the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. Ratified by the U.S. in 2002, the Optional Protocol lays out guidelines for the treatment of former child soldiers in U.S. custody and establishes the U.S.'s minimum obligations to protect children under 18 from military recruitment. Twenty-two U.S. officials, including Department of Defense officials overseeing Detainee Affairs, reported to the U.N. Committee during a public review session today. U.N. officials questioned the U.S. delegation on the basis of "shadow reports" submitted by the ACLU and two other groups, as well as two official reports submitted by the U.S. delegation. A report the U.S. submitted last week contained the explosive revelation that the U.S. has detained 2,500 children under 18 in U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 513 children currently imprisoned in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq alone. These revelations and other information disclosed in the shadow reports prompted clear concern among the U.N. Committee members, who pointedly told U.S. officials they were concerned about the detention of children in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prosecution of former child soldiers at Guantánamo, and the abusive military recruitment of youth. The Committee pulled no punches, and were extremely forceful with the U.S. delegation, cutting them off when they digressed, pushing them repeatedly on issues, and generally expressing its displeasure with the U.S. record on children in armed conflict. In particular, the U.N. officials pushed the United States to clarify how it has determined that only eight children have ever been detained at Guantánamo, and it questioned the U.S. on its claims that only two prisoners currently at Guantánamo were children at the time of their transfer to the prison. U.N. Committee members demanded to know why discrepancies in the figures of child detainees may exist (reports claim as many as 60 children have been transferred to Guantánamo since 2002), pointing out that the U.S. had failed to count a third prisoner currently out Guantánamo, Mohammed El-Gharani, who was only 14 when first captured and has reportedly attempted suicide seven times at Guantánamo. U.S. officials demurred, claiming that it is difficult to ascertain prisoners' ages and that Department of Defense records indicated El-Gharani was an adult. Committee members asked how it was that the U.S. was unaware that a child was in its custody, and expressed shock that the U.S. did not give these former child prisoners the benefit of the doubt, accepting in good faith their claims they were children, instead of current practice of leaving these children imprisoned until they became adults while in Guantánamo. U.S. officials vowed to look into the case of Mohammed El-Gharani, and provided no satisfactory explanation. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child also questioned the U.S. on its detention of children in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. was detaining 800 children in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq back in September 2007, and following the troop surge in Iraq, the U.S. was detaining 100 new children per month in 2007. The Committee observed that children detained at U.S.-run facilities in Iraq are treated just as adults are, without distinction demanded by international law requiring special consideration to children, and in some cases these children do not receive health and education services, without competent judicial review. The Committee questioned the U.S. about limits on the detention of children in Iraq and Afghanistan, which can be as long as a year without charge or access to an attorney, and in some cases even longer than a year —so long that, in some cases, the Committee noted, the children become adults while languishing in detention. U.N. officials also grilled the U.S. delegation on U.S. military recruitment policies and abusive recruitment practices that target children under 18. Referencing JROTC cadet corps in which over 470,000 high school students are enrolled and the unprecedented access to public schools guaranteed to recruiters by the No Child Left Behind Act (PDF), one Committee member observed, "Using our education system to promote a military agenda seems to fly in the face of the spirit of the Optional Protocol." Committee members repeatedly expressed concern about the military's targeting of children of racial minorities and low-income youth, an issue the U.S. delegation never addressed in its replies to the Committee. U.N. officials also observed that there are numerous reports of aggressive and coercive recruitment practices and asked where the U.S. draws the line, as some well-documented tactics ought to be off limits. All in all, it was a forceful demonstration of the U.N.'s disapproval of the U.S.'s policies, bookended by a polite opening and closing of the session. It was clear from the review today that the United States stands alone in some of its detention and recruitment policies. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. is capable of embarrassment and will respond to the strong disapproval and, in some cases, shock, over the U.S.'s deplorable record on these issues, by instituting real reforms. Until then, the U.S. stands apart in its failure to respect basic children's rights standards. Tags: children's rights, corporal punishment, Human Rights Program |
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