Obama Pushes Racial Quotas for School Punishment

Obama Announces Establishing Racial Quotas for School Discipline (YouTube)

Number three, we know that Latino kids are almost twice as likely as white kids to be suspended from school. Black kids are nearly four times as likely. And if a student has been suspended even once by the time they're in 9th grade they are twice as likely to drop out.

That's why my administration has been working with schools on alternatives to the so-called "zero tolerance" guidelines — not because teachers or administrators or fellow students should have to put up with bad behavior, but because there are ways to modify bad behavior that lead to good behavior — as opposed to bad behavior out of school. We can make classrooms good places for learning for everybody without jeopardizing a child's future. (Applause.) And by building on that work, we can keep more of our young men where they belong — in the classroom, learning, growing, gaining the skills they need to succeed.

Number four, we know that students of color are far more likely than their white classmates to find themselves in trouble with the law. If a student gets arrested, he's almost twice as likely to drop out of school. By making sure our criminal justice system doesn't just function as a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, we can help young men of color stay out of prison, stay out of jail. And that means then, they're more likely to be employable, and to invest in their own families, and to pass on a legacy of love and hope.