How We Won School Discipline Reform in Massachusetts | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity

How We Won School Discipline Reform in Massachusetts | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity:

How We Won School Discipline Reform in Massachusetts

Posted on: Wednesday July 23rd, 2014

By Tom Mela, Massachusetts Advocates for Children

This guest post was written by Tom Mela, Senior Project Director at Massachusetts Advcoates for Children (MAC). 

Left to right: Gavi Wolf (ACLUM), Sondra Peskoe,
Rep. Alice Wolf, Tom Mela (MAC) and Ann Lambert
(ACLUM) at the Massachusetts State House when
Chapter 222 was passed. Photo courtesy of MAC.

Though Massachusetts’ public schools rank near the top of schools nationwide, they still struggle to ensure that students are treated fairly in the classroom. In Massachusetts and across the nation, students of color and students with disabilities still face higher suspensions and expulsions rates than their counterparts, often for similar, minor misbehavior.

But starting this year, Massachusetts is taking a bold step to change that. The new Chapter 222 law, which went into effect July 1, puts Massachusetts at the forefront of a nationwide movement to reduce the use of out-of-school exclusions and provide those students who are barred temporarily from the classroom access to the resources they need to keep up with their studies.

It has taken years of organizing to get to this point. Massachusetts Advocates for Children is funded through the state’s civil legal aid system to convene the Education Law Task Force (ELTF), a coalition of public interest legal organizations with expertise in education law. To help advocates in other states learn how they, too, might tackle the school-to-prison pipeline, here’s how our Massachusetts coalition How We Won School Discipline Reform in Massachusetts | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity: