Wednesday, January 9, 2019  |  Chris Woodward (OneNewsNow.com) AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to FacebookFacebook19Share to TwitterTwitterShare to EmailEmailShare to MoreMore11

Judicial Watch is commending the Trump administration for rescinding an Obama-era policy involving schools.

In 2014, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice issued a “Dear Colleague” letter to schools as part of an effort to address the number of in-school arrests, suspensions, and other actions that educational institutions were taking.

“The essential premise of that whole program is really obscene in my view – and it is that white teachers as a group, across the country, are racist and target children of color – blacks and Latinos – for discipline or for suspensions and expulsions and don’t do that with white children,” said Judicial Watch senior investigator Bill Marshall Monday on the radio program “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.”

“[The federal agencies] threatened to investigate them if the racial breakdown of arrests and suspensions in the school districts reflected a higher proportion of students of color being disciplined, regardless of the activities that they were engaged in.”

Marshall added that the Obama administration offered money to school districts to try to get them to buy into the program. “From its very foundation, I think the policy was really pernicious,” he stated, “and President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are really to be commended for rescinding this obscene policy.”

Arne Duncan (pictured), Obama’s secretary of education at the time, said effective teaching and learning cannot take place unless students feel safe at school.

“So the way he’s going to make students feel safe at school is by leaving the most criminal-minded, violent, and disruptive students in the schools instead or removing them or having them removed by arrest or suspension?” Marshall asked rhetorically.

“This is sort of typical leftist thinking, where the world is kind of upside down and their solutions to these problems are almost exactly 180 degrees to the opposite of what they should be.”

The 177-page report released last month by the Federal Commission on School Safety details 93 best practices and policy recommendations for improving safety at schools across the U.S. OneNewsNow reported last week, however, that a career school safety expert thinks the feds “dropped the ball” by recommending that school staff be armed as part of the overall approach to school safety. AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to FacebookFacebook19Share to TwitterTwitterShare to EmailEmailShare to MoreMore11