(Los Angeles Times)—Violating a school dress code. Using a cellphone in class. Mouthing off at a teacher.
There was a time when that kind of behavior, called “willfully defiant” conduct, would get a California public school student suspended.
But over the last decade, a sea change in state discipline policy — one born in part out of an understanding that such suspensions disproportionately affect Black, Latino and Indigenous students — largely outlawed that kind of punishment. Instead, schools were advised to turn to practices including conflict resolution and counseling.
Now, though, an executive order signed by President Trump could presage legal challenges of pioneering California laws that overhauled school discipline by banning willful defiance suspensions for K-12 students.
In his April 23 order, Trump directed the Education Department to root out school discipline frameworks based on “discriminatory equity ideology” and issue new “commonsense” practices in the nation’s K-12 schools, while criticizing previous guidance from Democratic administrations. President Obama had directed schools to avoid enacting discipline policies that disproportionately punished underrepresented student groups — a stance later supported by President Biden.
Trump has said such rules amount to racial discrimination because…
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