The prompt: do you favor zero tolerance for school misbehavior/violence or are you on the side of addressing the root causes of misbehavior and violence and enacting an alternative plan to make schools safer and fight-free.
Group A: Find Historical Context for prompt
Group B: Find visual rhetoric that addresses the issue on the pro-- zero sum side of the issue
Group C: Find statistics for MN that show current rates of suspension district by district, race and gender.
Group D: find information on other countries' ways of approaching issues of school discipline
Group E: Find an opinion piece concerning topic-- pro- zero tolerance
Group F: Find opinion piece conerning topic-- pro-root cause
Each group fills out source sheet
AP English
Language and Composition
Reading Time: 15 minutes
Suggested Writing
Time: 40 minutes
[The MN legislature is currently grappling with several
bills that address how students should be disciplined in MN schools. Currently,
there is a very wide gap between who gets suspended; students of color are
suspended at more than twice the rate of white students. Some claim this
perpetuates the learning gap and the school to prison pipeline. Others argue
that schools are seeing an upswing in violent behavior, teachers being
assaulted, and misbehaving students not being removed from schools via
suspension or expulsion. Some legislators prefer zero tolerance while others
feel the root cause of misbehavior is poverty and other social inequities and
the way to address discipline is by addressing the root cause.
Source
Author (last name, first name). “Title of Article.” Name of Site.
Date of Posting/Revision.
Name of institution/organization
affiliated with the site (sometimes found in
copyright statements). <electronic
address>
[A sentence or two in italics introducing the source
material]
[Paste selected
source content here]