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Posted on 05/30/2015 6:01:11 PM PDT by drewh
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is spending nearly $2 million to see if courts run by teenagers can be a viable tool to fight school bullying.
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) tasked WestEd, a San Francisco-based education research group, late last year to study the effectiveness of “youth courts,” where the roles of judge, jury, defense, and prosecution are filled by students, who can then administer punishment in middle and high schools.
“Reports of violence, bullying, and other offenses have resulted in concerns about school safety,” according to the NIJ grant. “Administrators, anxious to restore order, have adopted policies focusing on punishment that often results in removing students from school. Research indicates that such punishments do not increase school safety, but push youth, particularly minority students, out from mainstream education.”
The grant argues that rather than adult administrators disciplining students, the students should punish each other.
“Educators are looking for strategies to hold youth accountable while keeping them in the classroom and engaged in school,” the grant said. “One such strategy is the school-based youth court. In this program, pro-social youth occupy all the court roles: jury, judge, prosecutor, defender, and clerk/bailiff. Offenders have their case heard and receive a peer-imposed sentence, usually some type of community service.”
“School-based youth courts have been implemented in over 400 sites nationally,” the grant continued. “However, despite their popularity, there has been no rigorous study of their effectiveness. This project proposes a national impact study of the four most common school-based youth court models.”
The study will cost taxpayers $1,836,976 to study different types of youth courts, which can be run through a school or partnership with a juvenile justice program or community group.
One thousand participants will be included in the study, which will analyze the “moderating effects of race/ethnicity and gender.”
“As the largest and most ambitious randomized trial ever conducted of school-based youth courts, this study will greatly contribute to knowledge about the efficacy of school based youth courts,” the grant said. “An aggressive dissemination campaign via multiple scientific and policy/practice channels is proposed.”
Proponents of youth courts say they can be used to prevent teens from entering the criminal justice system. A high school outside Philadelphia uses its youth court as a mentor program. The Chester High youth court also allows students to interrogate one another for talking in class.
WestEd said its researchers are still in the early stages of selecting participants for the NIJ study, which plans to run for three years. The organization said they do not anticipate a need for additional funding from the DOJ.
WestEd has received a total $4,112,045 from NIJ since 2006, including another $1.5 million project to study bullying interventions in elementary schools. The “No Bully” project is training teachers to be a “Solution Coach” to work with the “bullying victim, bully followers, and several pro-social peers on developing solutions for ending the bullying.”
Requests for comment from the DOJ and the NIJ were not returned.
YOUTH COURT? sounds familiar...vaguley German....Russian perhaps?
The courts themselves will BE the actual bullying.
EVERYTHING this admin does serves to divide people and further police them.
The Obama premise NEVER matches the actual effect.
it is only in your heart ... contribute or find your heart lacking .... and truth ...
what ... you have no desire to give obama billions? What is wrong with you?
Barry only has another year, so he is pulling out all the stops in his effort to achieve the Marxist utopia. The Soviet Union was a great example of the government implementing a system where your family members and neighbors could rat you out for anything. Since the average American would never agree to such a system, Barry has come up with the idea that he can start the kids off right and implement a little Soviet Union in the school system. Now that Barry has declared Communist Cuba as our greatest ally, these youngsters can lead us all to Barry’s promised land.
Lord of the Flies.
Pay off to a politically connected client.
More proof the left has no respect for us. They confiscate currency from us in the form of taxes, fees, penalties as taxes, etc., and then throw it away on bullshit.
The “Jailers & Prisoners” psychology department experiments should have been sufficient to stop the idea of student courts with real powers.
Think Lord of the Flies, Children of teh Corn, . . . . .
You’re spot on there. Just ask Mark Stein what it’s like to be bullied endlessly by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (court).
All our schools need is a return to teachers being able to discipline kids without fear of reprisal, firing, jail, loss of retirement, etc. Today’s kids don’t fear anybody in the school administration and are free to bully as much as they want with impunity. If a teacher so much as looks at the student cross-eyed, it’s the teacher hauled before a court.
“Pro-social youth”? What does that even mean?
Exactly. The Stanford Prison experiment was done with adults. Just think of all the little Adolphs they are creating.
I would like to see a Kid Court go after Hitlery Rodman, the Destined.
It would probably be more effective than what the Dept. of Justice has done so far (absolutely nothing) investigating her corruption.
Sounds like another indoctrination technique. “Joeys father is a conservative while Andys father is a Democrat, ergo Joey is guilty and Andy is innocent. Repeat after me ...Joey is guilty and Andy is innocent, especially if Andy were black.”
I can’t deny that “bullying” happens, the problem is how to respond.
I was on the receiving end of such behavior in fifth grade back around 1970. The liberal teachers back then made passionate speeches against bullying and prejudice. I went to an all white but 25 percent Jewish school where anti-Semitism lurked in the shadows.
But their passionate speeches had the effect of turning the students into a mob that pushed and shoved the bullies across the playground at recess. That was not a good situation either.
Interestingly enough the family-children of one of the ‘bullies’ I remember ended up pursing careers in government ranging from law enforcement to education.
The whole world today seems to be operating like that fifth grade scenario (immature) because much of the world is either addicted to something or codependent with those who are addicted to something IMHO.
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