We reduced the number of suspensions!

 We reduced the number of suspensions

 

The word came down from on high.   Principals you are suspending too many students.  That needs to stop.  The number of suspensions needs to come way down.  Yes sir, the principals said.

But what to do with these misbehaving kids.  Surely you don’t expect us to modify instruction or provide different incentives.  Absolutely not.

The kids need to go and here’s the plan.  Dial 911.  Call the police, tell them you need an emergency transport to the local psychiatric hospital.

One of the schools in Wicomico County, Maryland follows this scenario on average about three times a week.  Children as young as 5 are handcuffed and taken to a psychiatric unit where their parents are called to come pick them up. 

Black students and students with disabilities are much more likely to be removed in this manner.   As the number of suspensions and expulsions declined, the number of mandated trips to the ER for a psych evaluation ticked up.

Last year this happened to about one for every 100 students in Wicomico County.  Children were handcuffed and taken to the emergency room.   At least 40% of these children were twelve or younger. More than half of these kids were black even though only a little more than a third or the Wicomico population of students is African-American.  

Advocates and parents say the issue is two-fold.  First and foremost the culture is one of punishment rather than repair.  Secondly, there is a lack of trained staff to address the issues in a manner that would help rather than harm the children.

These children are terrorized by the experience of being handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car without the support of a parent.  By the time the parents can reach their children, the damage has been done.

There aren’t handcuffs small enough for some of these kids, so their hands are tied together.  Parents report that children’s hands are chaffed from the handcuffs and children are confused and terrorized.  Wicomico County uses these emergency petitions more often per capita than almost every other Maryland district for which data are available.   It is against the law to use these tactics on children whose behaviors are a manifestation of the disability.  But that hasn’t stopped Wicomico County from using these emergency petitions repeatedly on children with autism.  

School officials, of course, deny the use of these tactics for disciplinary reasons.  They could not respond to why their use far exceeded all other districts.  But, hey, the suspensions are way down and ain’t that grand.

Mastery vs. Points Scored

 Mastery versus Points Scored

 

Leaders of the Dublin Wisconsin Unified School District had this great idea.  They wanted to replace counting points to determine a student’s grade with student mastery of the material.  Such a strange idea?   Lots of parents thought so.

At Board meetings, parents complained their kids were being guinea pigs for what they saw as an unproven approach.  Grades they insisted were a reward for rigor, hard work and participation in the classroom.  Under the new system, if a student showed he/she understood the material it would even be ok to skip homework once in a while.

Instead of giving letter grades (A-F) to show achievement, the standards-based system starts with a list of proficiencies to be achieved. Students then receive a number from 1 (below standard) to 4 (exceeded standard) for each proficiency.

New Hampshire, Maine, Wisconsin are all on board.  Connecticut, New Mexico and Oregon have recently adopted the system.

Teachers see the system as a way to emphasize learning over effort.   It is also a way to “recognize the individual journey of every student.  It acknowledges that we all learn differently at our own pace and in various ways.”  Fascinating conclusion but why did it take so long to figure out.

Maybe because there is a strong majority of teachers who will tell you that teaching to the test is what it’s all about and if something isn’t graded students won’t do it.  One teacher remarked that “many students want to do as little as humanly possible, they want to skate by”.  Might that not also true of some adults.  So why damn the entire system.   The same teacher believed that homework was an important adult life skill, teaching kids to meet a deadline.  From whence came the hubris that educators really can differentiate between an 88 and a 91?

Some students see the new program as an approach for kids who were getting bad grades under the old system. Students also said that they believed under the old system, teachers preferred kids who got good grades.  When students were polled the vast majority of them preferred the standards based new system.  Many people complained that the roll-out of the new program was poorly done, highlighting small points that attracted a lot of negative attention.

Still, a small but vocal group of about 35 parents, convinced the Board to do away with the standards-based system.  Shows to go, scoring points does still matter.