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Monday, August 12, 2019

Are Suspensions Necessary? Overused? Signs of Implicit Bias? Pipelines to Prison? Or, Evidence of Inadequate Teacher Preparation, Absence of Early Interventions and Social/Emotional School Supports? | Ed In The Apple

Are Suspensions Necessary? Overused? Signs of Implicit Bias? Pipelines to Prison? Or, Evidence of Inadequate Teacher Preparation, Absence of Early Interventions and Social/Emotional School Supports? | Ed In The Apple

Are Suspensions Necessary? Overused? Signs of Implicit Bias? Pipelines to Prison? Or, Evidence of Inadequate Teacher Preparation, Absence of Early Interventions and Social/Emotional School Supports?


The teacher reprimands a student; the student mumbles something under his breath, the teacher asks, “What did you say?” According to the teacher the student becomes “belligerent” and “threatening” and the teacher demands that the student be suspended.
Not an uncommon scenario.
Is removal from class for a specific length of time the appropriate response of the principal? Are there acceptable alternatives?
The Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, published a study of school discipline practices, actually results of a survey of “more than 1200 teachers.”
The Fordham Institute article begins,
The debate over school discipline reform is one of the most polarized in all of education. Advocates for reform believe that suspensions are racially biased and put students in a “school-to-prison pipeline.” Opponents worry that softer discipline approaches will make classrooms unruly, impeding efforts to help all students learn and narrow achievement gaps.
One of the problems with the concept are the unaddressed core questions: Why are Afro-American boys being suspended at higher rates than other students? Do suspensions lead to better behavior for the suspended students? Or, are suspensions a “pipeline to prison,” Is the anti-social act that led to the suspension the beginning of the pipeline? And, do suspensions, removal of students from a class, actually increase outcomes for the remainder of the class?