Daniel Losen remembers the hard lesson he learned as an elementary teacher faced with the problem of dealing with misbehaving students in his classroom.
He realized that sending them to the principal’s office, as he frequently did, just showed them that he, as their teacher, lacked authority.
Losen eventually did learn how to address his students’ misbehavior in ways that did not punish the entire class or risk escalating behavioral problems. Now director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, part of UCLA’s Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, he's become a nationally recognized expert and attorney specializing in educational law who’s leading a study on the racial disparities among students who are suspended from school.
Working with scholars from across the nation, Losen and the center's study have garnered national attention for dramatic findings on the preponderance of minority and students with disabilities who are more frequently suspended from school than other students.Recently, these mounting concerns about the impact of student suspensions surfaced in L.A. when the Los Angeles Unified School Board voted May 13 to ban suspensions of defiant students and direct school officials to use alternative disciplinary practices instead.
