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Education news coming out of Texas lately seems to depict a large-scale comedy of errors. There are misplaced funding priorities (here, here and here) and hard-fought battles to include mainstream science curriculum. Texas is the lone (star) state to pull out of a significant education council that collaborates on state-directed (optional) common standards, and it does not ascribe to the trend to more specifically delineate student racial demographic information for data and research purposes. But at least the most recent debacle may provide a silver(ado) lining: according to Edweek, in explaining the need for the new Supportive School Discipline Initiative, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the numbers from a recent study finding that 60 percent of Texas school children are suspended or expelled between 7^th grade and graduation “are a kind of wake up call,” and that “it’s obvious we can do better.”

In short, the initiative is a joint undertaking by the Departments of Justice and Education, and it targets curbing school discipline policies that push students into the juvenile justice system, and away from continuing their education.

At last week’s announcement of the initiative, Arne Duncan noted his first-hand experience with poor discipline policies in Chicago schools. The Edweek article summarized his explanation, saying that “7 percent of schools were responsible for more than half of the arrests of young people in the city. A small group of principals were calling the police too often to deal with minor disciplinary issues, he said, while schools with similar demographics handled the same behavior problems in other ways.” He pointed out that this was not due to apathy or ill-will on the part of administrators and teachers;  rather those involved were unaware of a better strategy.

To develop improved strategies,  the initiative  focuses on several goals: building consensus for action among stakeholders on each level of government; collaborating to do research and data collection on interventions in order to promote awareness and shape policy; and  ensuring school discipline policies and practices correspond with federal civil rights laws.

I have written before on the significance of effectively dealing with dangerous behavior in schools, on different philosophies on discipline currently carried out in schools, and on emphasizing education over incarceration to improve behavior and chance for success. This initiative indicates that the federal government wants to take meaningful steps to address what has been termed “the school-to-prison pipeline”—that when schools call on the police to discipline students, they are more likely to drop out and end up in American’s ever-growing prison population. While the federal government does not have the authority to directly change school discipline policies, clearly the government has resources and power by which to—at least theoretically—effectively broker collaboration and consensus among state and local governments, schools, and non-profits.

The study on Texas illustrates why an even-handed approach to finding better, more equitable discipline policies is so important. For example, only three percent of disciplinary actions were for felony-level offenses for which state law mandates expulsion; the rest were at the discretion of school officials. And—mimicking a trend present more generally in the country—black, Hispanic, and students with disabilities were much more likely to be punished for lesser offenses than other groups committing these offenses.

And so, in as much as it helped provide a catalyst for national attention for this significant issue, (cowboy) hats off to you, Texas.