Julia: Your bio says you were a former school board member. I'm sure you still have "connections" with school administrators in Providence. I'm sure they would allow you to "shadow" a Principal or Dean of Students for a day, a week, whatever. Hell...you could be the "counselor" that you say each and every "acting out/crying out" student should have in lieu of suspension. You could be part of the solution instead of part of the problem!

And you have the justification...collecting first-hand data for your educational column.

If you had spent some "quality time" with the typical "acting out/crying out" student - while he/she was still "fired up" - methinks your column (assuming that you were still inclined to write it) would have had a slightly different tone. (After one of our students got through calling you a white, mother-f***ing b*tch and screaming for you to get the f*** outta her/his face...his/her "grill", well, I would like to have taken pointers on your approach to getting her/him to "sit down and reason...together."

Oh...I think you would try. I think you are "a believer". But, Julia...how do you find the time to "reason" with the many, many students that get sent out of class for destroying the "learning environment" for the majority of kids who where NOT "acting out/crying out"...who simply came to school that day to learn? Where do you put them all...or do they simply "sign up" for your counseling, staying in the classroom, tossing books and chairs, cursing out their classmates and the teacher, while awaiting your services?

Can we ass-u-me that you accept the concept of "in-school suspension"? Do we send them ALL to the Alternative Classroom...no matter what they have done to their teachers and fellow classmates...no matter how destructive they are to the "learning environment"?

You cite the number of hours and days of educational opportunity that are lost by the "acting out/crying out students" while they are banished from their fellow humans. I would venture a guess that the number of hours and days of educational opportunity lost by the BEHAVING STUDENTS would dwarf YOUR statistic of "collateral damage".

Julia: I would agree...there are too many unnecessary suspensions. (I would actually venture a guess that your two example students - "walking too slowly...being mouthy" - left some details out of their self-serving accounts. The students were most likely suspended for other, more egregious words or actions. They gave you the least offensive portion of their actions...to portray themselves in the best light possible. Hey, they're teenagers!)

I agree with you...suspensions for tardiness...an oxymoron. If getting to class on time is important...missing the entire class while on suspension is worse. Suspensions for actions that are not disruptive or only mildly disruptive undermine the value of suspensions for correcting more severe behavior.

I personally witnessed in my years at Cairo High School students being suspended for three days for their third tardy to class. During the same week, a student might hurl a book across the classroom in anger, curse out the teacher, violently slam the door against the wall on their way to the office...only to be "talked to" and sent on to the next class. What kind of message is that?

So, are there problems with suspensions?

YES!

But, Julia...be for real! Abolish suspension as "an educational tool" all together?

It's like jails and prisons...

Does putting convicted criminals into jails and prisons work?

Sometimes, sometimes not.

There is overwhelming data that shows that prisons are VERY effective "educational institutions"...petty crooks can/do learn new, improved techniques from their more accomplished "classmates". Talk about a successful peer tutoring model! Barack Obama and Arne Duncan see an extended school day/year as the solution to the ills of public education. Prison? 24/7!

But...abolish jails/prisons completely. Sorry...NOT the answer.

It's like what they say about "locks"...that they keep honest people, well, honest. If we did not send our worst "acting out/crying out" citizens to jail/prison, how many more incidents of misbehavior would society incur?!

Is counseling of "acting out/crying out" students a good idea? Of course. That's why we already do it...with the resources we have available. Unfortunately, the availability and cost of certified counselors is problematic...too much demand, not enough supply.

In an ideal world...donkeys probably fly. In our world...students sometimes act like jackasses and must be removed from the "general population". If we can find a way to shorten their "time out" period and reduce future misbehavior...I'm all for it.

Until such time...

From the Providence Journal...

Link to Original Story

Julia Steiny:
Suspending students only makes a bad situation worse

Schools banish kids often and self-righteously. Generally, educators and the public believe that suspensions and even expulsions are sound, necessary practices. If kids don’t behave according to the rules, out they go, onto the streets where apparently they will learn how to control their impulses, anger or poor choices. Feral behavior is sent back into the wild.

Hasta la vista, baby.

I bring this up at holiday time, when people of all ages hope to belong somewhere. As mammals, we dearly want to connect with creatures who connect back to us. So banishment feels horrible. It mainly teaches us to resent or even hate the banishers. It’s barbaric.

Even so, in school year 2006-07 (the latest available national data), America’s schools meted out 3.2 million suspensions. That year Rhode Island’s public schools kicked kids out of school for well over 60,000 days — or 167 years of class time spread among fewer than 18,000 kids. For some reason the data lumps together all 18,000 kick-outs, no matter what kind of suspension they got — out-of-school, in-school, or “alternative program.” They’re a subset of “bad kids” among the 152,000 students attending our public schools that year.

It gets worse. The 167 years are only for out-of-school suspensions. If you also add the days spent in in-school suspension and “alternative programing,” it comes to a total of just under 85,000 days (232 years) of learning interrupted, if not completely halted.

Furthermore, over 5,000 incidents of suspension were for skipping detention. It’d be funny, if it weren’t so awful.

Suspension is a holdover from seemingly-efficient factory-model schools. Defective products are rejected from the assembly line and considered “acceptable casualties” until the number of “casualties” exceeds acceptable and forces the assembly line to stop and solve the problem.

Schools set no such limits. Lots of misbehavior leads to lots of acceptable casualties. And zero-tolerance policies have driven these casualties through the roof in many schools.

Nationally about a third of the kids drop out before graduating from high school each year. Guess what? Most drop-outs have been suspended, many repeatedly.

I often hear that suspensions teach kids a lesson. Really? What? Do the kids understand the reasons why we all need to cooperate with community norms? Do the adults model those norms? Are kids coached in alternatives to acting out? Some parents coach behavior well, but frankly, fewer and fewer parents know how. You would think that by now, with all the pressure to perform, schools would have become aces at teaching social skills, if only to help kids learn the traditional subjects.

Providence’s Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence works intensively with urban kids and so was able to put me in touch with two girls on suspension.

One girl said she was kicked out of school for walking too slowly in the hallway. The other was mouthy about not having a hall pass. They’d been rude, but felt they’d been provoked. Both had already been suspended repeatedly, so it’s a wonder anyone thought another suspension would curb their unwanted behavior.

And what did they learn? One girl snapped, “Nothing,” and the other, “I learned what was on TV.” From morn to night, for days on end, both watched TV. “What else do you want me to do?” By their own admission neither was an academic star, so these suspensions were days and accumulated weeks of non-instructional time.

There are alternatives. Personally, I admire what are called “restorative practices.” Google will give you details, but in essence: get to the bottom of what’s going on with that kid. Why can’t she focus on her classwork, get along with others, be civil, or quit acting out?

Margaret Paccione-Dyszlewski, Bradley Hospital’s director of behavioral education, says “When a child is presenting challenging behavior, it is safe to assume that she is trying to communicate something. The communication could be a simple as ‘I don’t understand this homework’ or as complex as ‘I hurt because there is chaos at home.’ If we take the time to look beneath the surface and hear her, she will often lead us to a solution.”

So often we’re just punishing the punished, the neglected, bullied or lonely.

Mind you, we should impose a consequence, when that seems appropriate, by all means. Create a restitution plan, when property is destroyed. Have a meeting with the victim, the offender and their parents, so everyone hears and understands the victim’s experience and feelings. Often kids just aren’t thinking and need a graphic, emotion-laden picture of what their actions mean to other people. These experiences teach. Suspensions do not.

Say to the miscreant: “You belong to us and our community. But that behavior is unacceptable. Here’s why. Here are alternatives.”

But don’t ever banish kids from their communities. It does more harm than good.