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School Discipline Practice and Policies 

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School Discipline Practice and Policies 

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One of the most common issue among schools seems to be agreeance on discipline that has a positive effect. When kids act out it is not always because they are seeking attention. Sometimes what is perceived as misbehavior could be a result of a disability or even cultural differences. High school and older group of middle schoolers are more subject to critical discipline that can be unfair. At these ages they begin to out grow the rewarding system of the elementary schools, using treats and sticker. The discipline system then switches to suspensions and being expelled.

The main focus in changing the practice and policy of how older students are disciplined is the idea of when a student is expelled or suspended the chances of it teaching that student to not do that behavior again is unlikely but what it is certainly doing is making sure that there is one less child that is getting the education that they need and deserve.

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- 95% of suspensions are non-violent which consist of things like being disruptive or dress code violations (Duncan, 2014)

- "Secondary schools have suspended or expelled an estimated two million students a year "(Duncan, 2014)

-"Schools in South Carolina suspended 12.7 percent of students—about one in eight students during the 2009-10 school year. By contrast, schools in North Dakota suspended 2.2 percent of students—about one out of every 50 students". (Duncan, 2014)

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How does this current discipline policy affect the school systems? 

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How does this current discipline policy affect the school systems? 

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According to Sarah Omojola, a former school teacher in New Jersey, she found that schools with higher rates of suspensions have lower academic quality. In addition to that, she added within the last thirty years the suspension rates have risen without improving the school systems.

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All students can learn. That's a simple but profound starting place for talking about changing school discipline policies. As a former teacher in New Orleans public schools, I am well aware of the difficulty of teaching students who have varying backgrounds, abilities and learning styles in an ever-changing school system, inundated with countless internal and external pressures.

However, research has shown that students are frequently suspended on grounds such as "willful defiance" for behavior that is often related to having a disability, being culturally different from teachers or administrators, or because they are still learning how to respect themselves and others.

Unlike suspension for safety reasons, suspending students for "willful defiance" is an unsound educational policy that ultimately results in students losing valuable educational time. A recent report by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA shows that high school suspension rates have risen dramatically in the past 30 years without actually improving school climates. Notably, the American Psychological Association found that schools with higher rates of suspensions have lower academic quality and school climate ratings.

This year Assemblymember Roger Dickinson has introduced AB 420, which would eliminate "willful defiance" as grounds for suspension in grades K-5, where students are in early stages of development and, therefore, should be kept in school to receive the education and services that they need instead of a fast track to the juvenile justice system. The bill leaves in place more than 20 other grounds for suspension. These small changes will go a long way to reducing suspensions and, therefore, the negative impact that suspensions have on students' education and futures.

Already, educators across California are shifting the culture in their schools and districts by pioneering research-based approaches such as restorative justice, social-emotional learning and positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS). These approaches use different ways of holding students accountable, but all have proven results. Contrary to what many people believe, these strategies often cost little or nothing, can be funded with existing sources and increase achievement scores. As a former teacher in a school with a chaotic environment, I was frequently dealing with student misbehavior instead of teaching. Without the full support of the administration, I - in collaboration with teachers teaching the same grades and subject - made some headway with proactive, positive discipline practices in my classroom. But I know that it is much easier to teach in a school where there is a calm environment throughout and everyone is on the same page about how to help students struggling with behavior. For that reason and more, we at Public Counsel have created a free guide to accessing these alternatives, learning from other successful educators, and obtaining the training you need to implement them at your school.

These toolkits contain interviews with educators who are actively changing the culture and improving discipline practices in their schools. During one such interview, Sacramento elementary school Principal Billy Aydlett told me, "The traditional model says, 'Throw kids out for refusing to listen to you.' What I learned is that what our students need the most is not negative consequences and zero-tolerance policies. What our students need is absolutely consistent and urgent support around maintaining appropriate behavior."

Through observations at various schools and conversations with educators and community organizations, we have seen that alternate discipline strategies focus on teaching appropriate behavior and accountability, thereby allowing classrooms and schools to run much more smoothly. A San Francisco elementary school teacher who experienced this kind of improvement firsthand said, "I have been teaching for 10 years, the last five of which have been here at Rosa Parks. This is our second year with Restorative Practices and the climate here is much better. There is a lot less screaming and fighting from the kids. I also see a lot fewer 'frequent fliers,' who usually are repeatedly referred to the office. Now we go through a restorative conference and that's it. I think that the students feel like their voices are being heard so they are less angry and less likely to act out."

A Restorative Practices trainer in Richmond told Public Counsel, "[In] addition to the sharp decrease in suspensions (53%), the change in overall school climate was palpable and observable. The year prior, you would not have wanted to walk through the halls during a class change. Students were jostling, bumping and running into each other and administrators were having a hard time clearing the halls." Now students get to class on time and administrators report fewer behavior issues overall.

You can read interviews with these educators and many others at our website.

Schools that take this research-based approach and put an end to knee-jerk suspensions have experienced increases in student achievement in addition to improved school climate. James A. Garfield Senior High School in Los Angeles serves a population in which 90% of its students are eligible for free/reduced price meals. After adopting a school-wide positive behavioral interventions & supports approach, the school not only reduced suspensions from more than 600 down to just one, it also increased its score on the Academic Performance Index (API), the state's measure of academic achievement.

These results are not isolated; for example, Pioneer High School in Woodland has experienced similar improvements, including consistent, significant API growth for the entire school and each subgroup. These California results have been borne out in statewide and national studies, which show that implementing alternative discipline practices also results in improved academic achievement, reduced dropout rates, higher teacher retention and a more positive school culture.

For schools and districts that are concerned about the cost of implementing such alternatives, each of the educators that we interviewed said that the costs were nominal or something that they could fund from existing sources. Principal Aydlett explained, "Anyone who says money is a factor or a barrier to implementing an alternative discipline practice doesn't want to change."

I challenge schools and districts struggling with student behavior and school climate to fix their discipline practices and policies, but this challenge comes with the promise of support for educators who want to embrace it. Instead of hoping and praying for solutions, schools and districts can adopt research-based alternatives and look for guidance in similar places across California that are already seeing results.

Visit www.fixschooldiscipline.org to learn more, get access to resources and contact me for free technical assistance and support.

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is statewide education advocate for Public Counsel Law Center, the nation's largest pro bono law firm. She is a former English teacher and co-founder of Stand Up For Each Other!, an organization that provides advocacy services for students facing disciplinary action in New Orleans. She now works with Public Counsel and Fix School Discipline on policy and advocacy relating to stopping the school-to-prison pipeline.

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COMMENTARY: It's time to fix school discipline practices and policies

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All students can learn. That's a simple but profound starting place for talking about changing school discipline policies. As a former teacher in New Orleans public schools, I am well aware of the difficulty of teaching students who have varying backgrounds, abilities and learning styles in an ever-changing school system, inundated with countless internal and external pressures.

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School Social Worker in Relation to the Issue 

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School Social Worker in Relation to the Issue 

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As a School Social Worker, ensuring that children are not being abused by an over-use of authority is apart of an ethical duty. In order to guarantee that the students are receiving the most affective form of discipline that enhances their personal standpoint, academical journey and mental stability it would best to address the issue using a Positive Behavioral Invention and Support (PBIS).

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Tier 1: Is used to lay a foundation of what the school's expectations are and acts as a form of being proactive to the unwanted behaviors. This tier is for all students and could be a student body meeting or a announcement made.
Tier 2:  This tier is to support those who were not successful with tier 1.  This requires specific students to maybe participate small group meetings that may focus on topics such as academics, self-management or even social skills.
Tier 3: Focuses on students with more intense needs. These tend to be the 5-10% that did not succeed with the support of Tier 2. This group students could be students with behavioral or emotional disorders, autism or no label at all.

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Provides a structure system that allows students to know what is expected of them It also has a certain way of dealing with the wrong behavior. This would encourage the desired behavior and would help build relationship between the staff and the students.

Elementary and Middle schools could use such things as color cards. Green representing good behavior, yellow representing a warning and then the last card would be red meaning a call home. This would be would be an example of something a child would be able to see and understand that the goal is to remain on green. High schools students need a similar system. They still should be rewarded for good behavior.

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Before doing research, I assumed the suspensions had negative consequences when it came to the academics of those who had been suspended or expelled. Interestingly, a study has been done and in addition to those suspend, non-suspended students also suffered academically in classrooms where students were suspended versus in classes where students were not. Brea L. Perry, a sociologist at Indiana University, states that "The higher the number of suspensions during the course of a semester, the lower the non-suspended students’ scores on end-of-semester reading and math evaluations." The conclusion of this study was that the affects were more signicant the more the suspension rate was above average

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Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

It's a belief repeated every day by teachers, principals and parents of rule-abiding children: Suspending disruptive students will allow the rest of the class to settle down and learn. But a new, large study calls this rationale into question.

The study is believed to be the first to look closely at the academic performance of individual students who have never been suspended, but who attend schools where others are suspended. After tracking nearly 17,000 students over three years, two Midwestern researchers found that high rates of school suspensions harmed math and reading scores for non-suspended students.

The relationship was inverse: The higher the number of suspensions during the course of a semester, the lower the non-suspended students' scores on end-of-semester reading and math evaluations, said Brea L. Perry, a sociologist at Indiana University and co-author of the study with Edward W. Morris, a sociologist at the University of Kentucky. The study, which was published in the December issue of the peer-reviewed journal American Sociological Review, involved students in 17 middle schools and high schools in a Kentucky school district.

The higher the number of suspensions during the course of a semester, the lower the non-suspended students' scores on end-of-semester reading and math evaluations, the study found.

"What surprised us the most was this had not really been studied this way before," Perry said. The findings suggest that high levels of suspensions "can have a very negative effect on those so-called 'good apples,' or rule-abiding students," she said.

The findings were "robust," Morris said, even when the results were controlled for the level of violence and disruption at schools, school funding and student-teacher ratios.

A low or average rate of suspensions appeared to have no academic impact on the non-suspended students, Perry said. "It only becomes harmful when schools are above average in their use of suspensions," she said.

The reason, theorized Morris, whose work has focused on school environments and cultures, might have to do with the levels of anxiety and disconnection created in students when their peers are subject to frequent suspensions, often for issues such as dress code violations or insubordination.

"When you are in a very punitive environment, you're getting the message that the school is focusing on crime control and behavior control," he said. "Schools should really be about relationships."

"This is a new addition to the research, and a positive one," said Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA's Civil Rights Project and editor of the new book, Closing the School Discipline Gap. Other studies have found that when schools reduce suspension rates and institute alternative methods of resolving conflict, academic achievement goes up, Losen said. But he said he wasn't aware of a study that specifically examined the academic effects of suspensions on non-suspended students over time.

"The studies I've seen are not of this magnitude," said Laura Faer, statewide education rights director for the Public Counsel Law Center, a California public interest law firm that has been promoting alternative disciplinary measures.

Faer said that when she speaks about school discipline practices to groups, the number one comment from the audience is that suspensions are necessary because "when you remove bad kids, it helps other kids learn." This new study, she said, takes research about the importance of a positive school culture, and the harms of an excessively punitive culture, "to a whole different level."

In California, Gov. Jerry Brown has signaled a growing commitment on the part of the state to find more positive approaches to disciplining students, most notably through his signature on a new law, Assembly Bill 420, which limits the use of "willful defiance" as a reason to suspend students. The term is defined as disruptive behavior or defiance of authority. More than 700,000 school suspensions were recorded in California in 2010-11, according to Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, author of the bill.

In a blog pos t discussing the study, Perry wrote, "Researchers and child advocates have argued that contemporary disciplinary policies create winners and losers, often along racial and socioeconomic lines. Our research suggests that there are no winners."
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Study: Suspensions harm 'well-behaved' kids

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Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today It's a belief repeated every day by teachers, principals and parents of rule-abiding children: Suspending disruptive students will allow the rest of the class to settle down and learn. But a new, large study calls this rationale into question.