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Zero Tolerance Policies

This paper discusses two zero tolerance policy incidents at high schools in largely White middle-class neighborhoods. Both of these incidents received a lot of media attention, and many people have used them to demonstrate why zero tolerance policies are ineffective. These cases, however, do not in fact demonstrate the ineffectiveness of zero tolerance policies. Rather, they demonstrate that White middle-class families are often able to avoid the unfairly harsh consequences of zero tolerance policies. Casella's book, on the other hand, does demonstrate the ineffectiveness and unfairness of zero tolerance. But the stories in Casella's book are not the stories one usually reads about in the newspapers or hears about on the evening news.

On March 4, 2002, L.D. Bell High School Principal Jim Short expelled 16-year-old junior Taylor Hess (Mendoza, 2002, p. 1). Short stated that he had to expel Hess under the school district's zero tolerance policy for violence because Taylor carried a knife onto school property, which violated the school district's Student Code of Conduct that both Taylor and his mother, Gay Hess, had signed (Mendoza, 2002, p. 1). The Code prohibits students from bringing weapons onto school grounds.

After officials found the knife, they held a three-hour hearing attended by Taylor, his parents, three school administrators and a Hurst police officer. After the meeting, school officials told Taylor that his action posed a threat to his fellow students (Mendoza, 2002, p. 1). Four days later, they expelled Taylor for one-year and forbade him from attending school events or setting foot on school property. Eventually, Taylor appealed the initial one-year expulsion, and the school reduced it to a five-day suspension (Mendoza, 2002, p. 1).

When the incident occurred, Taylor told the principal that he had helped his father carry boxes of his late grandmother's belongings to the Goodwill Super Store in Hurst on Sunday. Mr...

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Zero Tolerance Policies. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:54, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1686686.html