We really can't throw away kids

 Getting Rid of Problems Really Doesn’t Work

 

For a long time the mantra in schools has been, we just need to get rid of the trouble makers so the rest of the kids can learn and teachers can teach.   Turns out that really is not good advice.

First of all, research has shown that suspending kids really does not improve behavior.  In fact, they are more likely to misbehave in the future.  Often being at home, means they are without supervision and are out in the streets and with unsavory characters.

Secondly, there is the notion that suspending a student will help him/her “get back on track”.  In reality, just the opposite happens.  Being out of school means the child gets farther behind academically.  The longer the suspension the greater the damage to the child’s academic achievement.  Plus, as achievement falls, the student’s self-concept as a learner falls as well.  The child begins to think of herself as not being able to learn as opposed to just not learning right now.  In school discipline, combined with continued instruction is much more effective.

But what about the rest of the kids?  The notion has been that excluding the troublemakers helps the other kids learn because the attention can be more on them and less on bad behavior.  Turns out that myth is just a myth as well.  Students identify with each other more than they do with the adults dishing out the punishment.  Kids have a strong sense of justice.  It may be their own justice system but it is strong nonetheless.  Consequently, if kids think the suspension was unfair or unjust they will be resentful of the teacher who punished their friend.  These feelings of resentment interfere with the learning of the not-suspended kids as with the ones who were suspended.

Prior to the pandemic, well over 2.5 million students received at least one suspension in the school year.  These suspensions disproportionately affect students of color, students with disabilities, students experiencing trauma in their personal lives or lower socio-economic status.  Black students have significantly longer suspensions than children of other races.  If what we are trying to do is improve educational outcomes for all kids then we are going about that effort in a backwards manner.

Kids need to receive the consequences of their behavior, no question about that.  But those consequences need to be directly linked to the actual behavior not to just pushing the issue out of the school and into the community.  There needs to be a system of restorative justice that all students buy into and that really changes behavior without the negative fallout. Getting rid of our problems by tossing them into the street doesn’t work.