The problem of student discipline disproportionately affects urban schools with large numbers of low income and ethnic minority students. Research over the past 35 years however has consistently shown that discipline policies that are understood and accepted by teachers, students, and parents and consistently enforced by school officials,…

This paper focuses on how community educators might collaborate to help break the cycle of frustration, failure, and violence that shadows many disadvantaged inner-city African American students. It suggests that persistent, race-based inequities in urban areas are a major factor in this syndrome. These causes are proposed to be disparity in…