Push-outs – 1974

I have several key words that I do searches for on a regular basis. One of those is push-outs. Last week I wrote, Truant, Homeschooling or A Push-out? and within it I shared that push-out was a newer term to describe a child whose family has been told by their school district that their child would most likely be better off not enrolled there. Many districts also suggest homeschooling as an alternative to these students.

I was mistaken that push-out is a newer term. As I was doing a search for the term this morning, I came upon a record of a 1974 National Public Radio Program transcript whose title reads: Pushouts: New Outcasts from Public School. A Transcript of “Options on Education,” September 9, 1974 at the Education Resources Information Center(ERIC).

ERIC’s Abstract states:

“Pushouts” are victims of discriminatory discipline procedures in public schools. Pushouts first came into view with the publication of a book by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial and the Southern Regional Council. The book is called “The Student Pushout: Victim of Continued Resistance to Desegregation.” The Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has been collecting statistical information regarding subjective determinations based on race that enter into disciplinary actions that result in students being pushed out of schools. The figures indicate that the percentage of minorities subject to disciplinary action, suspensions, or expulsions exceed their percentages in school systems. Not every suspended student is being pushed out, of course. The disproportionate suspension statistics may actually reflect behavior. In one school district the school superintendent testified in open court that institutional racism was the reason for the disproportion. Black and other minority kids are being pushed out of schools across the country as the statistics from Dallas, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Boston, and Dade County, Florida, indicate. To the Office of Civil Rights and the Justice Department a disproportionate number of suspensions of minority students are “red flags,” signals that something may be wrong. Whether those two federal agencies responded properly to the “red flags” is open to serious question. (Author/JM)

The transcript is not available at ERIC, but can be found at George Washington Univ., Washington, DC. Inst. for Educational Leadership. I have written them to see if I might request a copy of it.

Although pushing children out of public school may be an old public school policy, suggesting a family homeschool instead of attending public school is a newer phenomena. Here are some more citations from an earlier 2008 post by Susan Ryan at Corn and Oil, Pushouts again, as noted in our neighboring state of Indiana.

June 16, 2008 | Filed Under Empowerment, Fundamental Right, Home education, Uncategorized