In a recent letter (“Root Causes”, Sept. 21) responding to Victor Joecks’ column on racial disparities in school discipline, Lilia Martonak cites an America First Policy Institute report stating that children who live without their biological father are two to three times more likely to be suspended or expelled. Both writers suggest that “perhaps the real root cause of racial disparities is fatherlessness.” That conclusion rests on faulty causal logic.
The statistic shows an association between family structure and school discipline; it does not prove that father absence causes suspensions, much less that racial bias or school practices play no role. Family structure is also connected with poverty, neighborhood conditions, disability identification, trauma, school resources, and access to support. Unless a study accounts for those factors and compares similarly situated students, it cannot isolate cause.
Both writers also present a false choice. Home circumstances and institutional bias can both affect discipline; evidence for one does not disprove the other. If father absence is itself associated with broader social and economic inequities, it does not fully explain the disparity. To understand discipline disparities, we need facts about student behavior and how schools make discipline decisions, not an assumption based on an association.
