Following up on an investigative series, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Seattle Public Schools continue to discipline African-American students at nearly twice the rate of white students, suggesting a "chronic problem" of institutional racism.

But an examination of the district's own records strongly suggests it's not largely a problem of racism but of family structure, says Stefan Sharkansky, a statistical analyst whose posts at the weblog SoundPolitics.com gave firepower to Republicans in their challenge of the razor-close 2004 gubernatorial campaign.

Sharkansky says the data indicates "black students have a higher rate of discipline issues because a larger percentage are from single-parent homes."

The Post-Intelligencer, however, calls the problem a "discipline gap" that persists even as the district makes institutional changes in an attempt to drastically lower the number of students expelled.

The paper says that compared with white students, "African Americans were nearly twice as likely last year to receive short-term suspensions, lasting 10 or fewer days. Long-term suspensions were imposed on black students more than twice the time."

The Seattle paper, which investigated the disparity in 2002 in a special report called "An Uneven Hand," says the district "has made an effort in recent years to provide better training to teachers and administrators and focus on alternatives to suspending or expelling students. But short- and long-term suspension rates are virtually unchanged since 2000, and in some cases are higher."

In the introduction to its 2002 report, the Post-Intelligencer directly addressed the kind of suggestion Sharkansky is making, saying, "Plenty of people blame the race-based discipline gap on broken homes in the black community. They're wrong, too."

Sharkansky admits his analysis is "fairly crude" and doesn't prove a causal link between family structure and school discipline problems, and says, "I would never suggest that every child from a single parent home is at greater risk for discipline problems than every child with two parents in the house."

"But," he says, "it is not hard to see how a child with two constant parents to provide love and guidance has certain advantages in his/her social development, and this hypothesis is worth further investigation."

Seattle School Board member Darlene Flynn, chairwoman of the Student Learning Committee, told the paper the district needs to do a better job of lowering discipline rates, especially for black and Hispanic students.

"We're still seeing a lot of disproportionality," she said. "That hasn't improved at all."

District officials have been frustrated by the "daunting problem," the paper said, convening several task forces to study it, but recommendations rarely have been followed.

A five-year strategic plan approved last spring set a goal of narrowing the discipline gap by 20 percent annually, starting with this school year.

Flynn says she sees a link between the discipline gap and the "academic achievement gap," noting many students who are suspended or expelled already are weak academically and could decide to drop out.

"If we're not connecting the dots between academic success and academic suspensions, we're missing a very logical connection," Flynn said, suggesting the solution might be to do away with suspensions and expulsions, except for extreme cases.

"Maybe this needs to go the same way as corporal punishment," she told the Seattle paper.

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