Keep the littlest buggers in school!

 Keep the littlest buggers in school!

 

Maryland banned out-of-school suspension in 2017 for kids in pre-K through grade 2  unless a student was a threat to others and was evaluated by a school counselor or psychologist.  So what difference did it make?

Educators have long argued that suspension is not an effective tool for dealing with negative behaviors and it is highly correlated to poor graduation rates and involvement with the criminal justice system.  Of course, correlation does NOT mean causation and it just might mean that the same kids with bad behavior keep having those bad behaviors all their lives.

What we do know is that suspension seems to be more a protection for the school system than it is for preventing future bad behaviors of kids.

Most bans on suspension have been at the district level, Maryland is unique by having a state level ban.

One would think that a ban would mean none.  Not so.  Although suspensions did drop a great deal for the targeted grades.  In the first year of the ban, suspensions dropped 58% but there were still 1,409 suspensions in these low grades.   There also seemed to be an impact on 3^rd graders as there was a slight reduction in that grade as well.

And it seems kids of color still seem to be suspended at a disproportionate rate.  Teachers don’t want to give up this tool.

Here is what we do know that should be impacting the use of suspensions.   Children from lower socio-economic homes regardless of race and/or disability, have poor expressive language skills.  Humans who cannot speak their frustration and anger with language, do so with physical acting out.   Perhaps what we need to do act prophylactically is teach kids language skills with which to express anger.  In more basic terms, we need to teach kids how to speak their anger rather than aggressively show their anger behaviorally.

Instead we keep responding to the outcome rather than to the cause.  Suspension really doesn’t work to change kids’ behavior.  It just gives the teacher a bit of short- term relief.

Better aggressive (yes aggressive) language skills could circumvent the aggressive acting out behaviors.

The little buggers and the big kids are better off in school.