The Shadow
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Virginia schools suspended or expelled more than 90,500 students in the 2010-11 school year, but such harsh disciplinary measures don’t improve student behavior or make schools safer, according to a new report.
The JustChildren legal advocacy group said in the report, presented Thursday to the state Board of Education, that most suspensions stemmed from relatively minor misbehavior, such as disorderly conduct or misuse of electronics – violations that don’t involve weapons, drugs or injury to others.
“No one is saying there shouldn’t be consequences for misbehavior,” JustChildren legal director Angela Ciolfi said. “Academic deficits can be the cause of misbehavior, but we don’t want to exacerbate the problem by leaving students at home.”
Forcing students to miss instruction is counterproductive because it’s linked to lower achievement, higher dropout rates, and increased contact with the juvenile-justice system, the report said.
J.M., a 15-year-old eighth-grader, told the board he was removed from school on Sept. 8, 2010, after a disturbance with a student who teased him. He accidentally hit a teacher who tried to break up the fight and was suspended, then was expelled for what the school classified as an assault, he said.
“I was bored sitting at home and had nothing to do,” said J.M., who didn’t want to give his full name because of the sensitivity of his case. He said he wasn’t offered any educational services for the 440 days he was away from school.
“I hope no students will end up going through what I went through,” said J.M., who didn’t return to class until Nov. 1 after moving to a new district.
The study cited research by the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, which found that the state’s high schools that used suspension most often tend to have high dropout rates even after controlling for students’ demographics and attitudes. Also, “by forcing students to miss instruction, school exclusion aggravates the circumstances most closely linked to dropping out in Virginia.”
Suspensions and expulsions disproportionately affect black students, students from economically disadvantaged families, and students with disabilities, the study found. Black students are more likely to be suspended than white students for exhibiting similar behaviors, even though researchers have found no evidence that black students misbehave more often, the report said.
In Virginia, black males make up 12 percent of the student population and received 40 percent of all suspensions and expulsions in 2010-11, the report said.
For violations including smoking, leaving without permission and vandalism, black and white students experience more similar rates of suspension, according to the report. But for more subjective violations, including classroom disruption, disrespect and disorderly conduct, black male students are more harshly disciplined.
JustChildren also found that in 2010-11, students with disabilities received more than twice the rate of short-term suspensions – up to 10 days – as non-disabled students, and significant discrepancies among long-term suspensions – longer than 10 days but shorter than a year – and expulsions.
Also, students who have been suspended or expelled are more likely to face future suspension and expulsion, so such disciplinary actions end up rewarding such students’ desire not to be in school, rather than acting as a punishment.
JustChildren is advocating that the state push to increase the number of schools that use a discipline framework that establishes a common set of expectations for all students and addresses the root causes of misbehavior, so students potentially can improve their behavior rather than repeat the same mistakes.
The so-called Effective Schoolwide Discipline program has reduced in-school and out-of-school suspensions, and has saved administrative and instructional time, the study found. While the number of school divisions that has adopted the program has grown, only 12 percent of Virginia’s 1,838 schools currently use it.
While schools have to make their staff available for training, the state provides consultants and trainers, and the initial cost to implement ESD “is more than offset by the savings in instructional time, administrative time, special-ed referrals and ultimately, increased graduation rates,” Ciolfi said.
Also, the report says, the schools using the program decreased out-of-school suspensions by 75 percent for regular students and by nearly 86 percent for special-education students between 2007-10, and that pass rates in standardized math tests increased because students missed less instructional time.
JustChildren also would like to see the state Department of Education publicly report disciplinary measures and outcomes broken out by race, disability, gender and other subgroups, and notes that several other states already publish such data, including the neighboring states of Maryland and North Carolina.
The report recommends that Virginia require local schools to develop less subjective alternatives to removing students, and provide incentives for schools that successfully reduce suspensions and expulsions.
