DESE data shows New Bedford Schools over-disciplining children of color

We know that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts neither the schools nor the police are collecting adequate data on school-based offenses. This is not to single-out New Bedford. It reflects a state-wide, if not a national, lack of interest in tracking at-risk youth. Many types of data describing the process of a child moving through the juvenile justice system — from schools, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), police, district attorneys, courts, probation, the Department of Youth Services, federal DOE and DOJ mandated data — must be analyzed in order to answer two critical questions about School Resource...