Repeatedly Suspending Defiant Students Is Horrible. But So Is Dumping Them on Untrained Teachers.
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It’s one of the biggest debates in education today: What do you do with the unruly students who make learning difficult for the rest of the class? Do you sit them in the corner with a dunce cap, or do you refer them to the counselor down the hall, or do you eject them from school altogether?
Over the last few years, there’s been a nationwide backlash against out-of-school suspensions, which have been shown to affect minorities at a disproportionate rates and fast-track some already at-risk children on the school-to-prison pipeline. More and more schools are trying out a more progressive approach to school discipline, with Minnesota and Seattle schools experimenting with bans on out-of-school suspensions for elementary-school students accused of nonviolent offenses. The Houston Independent School District is currently considering a similar ban for students in second grade and below.
As the Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend, the Los Angeles Unified School District was a leader in this movement when it banned out-of-school suspensions for “willful defiance” two years ago. Last year, suspensions in LAUSD hit an impressive low of .55 percent, compared to 8 percent in 2007-2008.
But—yes, there’s a big, big but—teachers have also reported an increase in in-class disruptions. It turns out that deciding not to suspend students does not lead to a magical improvement in student behavior. From the Los Angeles Times story:
It's another day of disruption on this campus in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has been nationally hailed by the White House and others for its leadership in promoting more progressive school-discipline policies. The nation's second-largest school system was the first in California to ban suspensions for defiance and announced plans to roll out an alternative known as restorative justice, which seeks to resolve conflicts through talking circles and other methods to build trust…. But many teachers say their classrooms are reeling from unruly students who are escaping consequences for their actions.
If repeatedly sending kids home forLos Angeles Unified School District Suspension Ban: Teachers Complain of Constant Disruptions:
