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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:02 am
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Results for student discipline
5 results foundAuthor: Moll, Jeanette Title: Expelling Zero-Tolerance: Reforming Texas School Discipline for Good Summary: It is universally acknowledged that children will misbehave. Thus, so long as institutionalized education exists, so too will disciplinary problems. Both school discipline practices and the prevailing societal norms evolved with the educational institutions, which created the present-day system of zero-tolerance discipline: a system of mandatory punishments for specified behavior with little discretion and few alternatives. Zero-tolerance policies today extend to cover drugs, alcohol, violence on and off campuses, and sometimes even relatively minor infractions. Zero-tolerance policy supporters claim that this method of discipline is forceful enough to eliminate school violence through deterrence and removal from the classroom. Advocates also argue that zero-tolerance policies are clear-cut and uniform, and can provide peace of mind to parents. The data, however, reveals that the intended results of zero-tolerance measures were not necessarily achieved. Many studies have been conducted on zero-tolerance policies that cast doubt on their effectiveness. Furthermore, current crime and victimization rates do not indicate that zero-tolerance policies have produced increases in school safety. On top of that, these programs have been found to cost millions in taxpayer dollars each year through costly alternative programs for suspended students, while other costs compound the taxpayer investment, including lost educational hours for students and lost wages for parents taking time off work to deal with a suspended child. This evidence indicates that alternatives to zero-tolerance policies may lead to a more effective system of school discipline for students by keeping them in school and reducing overreliance on the justice system for school-based discipline. A tiered response to most low-level school discipline issues could create a far more effective approach to discipline via effective, targeted intervention into minor misbehavior, while ensuring that the most serious of oncampus offenses are still dealt with immediately, appropriately, and strictly. Details: Austin, TX: Texas Public Policy Foundation, Center for Effective Justice, 2012. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Policyi Perspective: Accessed April 4, 2013 at: http://www.texaspolicy.com/sites/default/files/documents/2012-08-PP18-ExpellingZeroTolerance-CEJ-JeanetteMoll.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.texaspolicy.com/sites/default/files/documents/2012-08-PP18-ExpellingZeroTolerance-CEJ-JeanetteMoll.pdf Shelf Number: 128211 Keywords: School Crimes (Texas)School SafetySchool ViolenceStudent DisciplineZero-Tolerance Policies |
Author: Losen, Daniel J. Title: Are We Closing the School Discipline Gap? Summary: Nearly 3.5 million public school students were suspended out of school at least once in 2011-12.12. That is more than one student suspended for every public school teacher in America. This means that more students were suspended in grades K-12 than were enrolled as high school seniors. To put this in perspective, the number of students suspended in just one school year could fill all of the stadium seats for nearly all the Super Bowls ever played-(the first 45). Moreover, recent estimates are that one in three students will be suspended at some point between kindergarten and 12th grade (Shollenberger, 2015). If we ignore the discipline gap, we will be unable to close the achievement gap. Of the 3.5 million students who were suspended in 2011-12, 1.55 million were suspended at least twice. Given that the average suspension is conservatively put at 3.5 days, we estimate that U.S. public school children lost nearly 18 million days of instruction in just one school year because of exclusionary discipline. Loss of classroom instruction time damages student performance. For example, one recent study (Attendance Works, 2014) found that missing three days of school in the month before taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress translated into fourth graders scoring a full grade level lower in reading on this test. New research shows that higher suspension rates are closely correlated with higher dropout and delinquency rates, and that they have tremendous economic costs for the suspended students (Marchbanks, 2015), as well as for society as a whole (Losen, 2015). Therefore, the large racial/ethnic disparities in suspensions that we document in this report likely will have an adverse and disparate impact on the academic achievement and life outcomes of millions of historically disadvantaged children. This supports our assertion that we will close the racial achievement gap only when we also address the school discipline gap. Suspension rates typically are three to five times higher at the secondary level than at the elementary level, as illustrated in figure 1. Furthermore, the actual size of the racial gap, such as that between Blacks and Whites, is much greater at the secondary level. The national summary of suspension rate trends for grades K-12 indicates that these rates increased sharply from the early 1970s to the early 2000s, and then more gradually, until they leveled off in the most recent three-year period. We conclude that in this recent period, no real progress was made in reducing suspension rates for grades K-12. After many years of widening, the gap in suspension rates between Blacks and Whites and between Latinos and Whites narrowed slightly in the most recent time period-that is, the 2009-10 and 2011- 12 school years. The gap narrowed, however, only because of the increase in the White suspension rate. Specifically, 16% of Blacks and 7% of Latinos were suspended in both years, while rates for Whites rose from 4% to 5%. We next broke down the national trend analysis to the elementary and secondary levels. We only had the necessary data for the three years shown in figure 3. Despite the persistence of deeply disturbing disparities, the good news is that we estimate a slight reduction nationally in suspension rates for Blacks, Latinos, and Whites at the secondary level, along with a small narrowing of the racial discipline gap. Details: Los Angeles: Center for Civil Rights Remedies, 2015. 50p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 16, 2015 at: http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/resources/projects/center-for-civil-rights-remedies/school-to-prison-folder/federal-reports/are-we-closing-the-school-discipline-gap/AreWeClosingTheSchoolDisciplineGap_FINAL221.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/resources/projects/center-for-civil-rights-remedies/school-to-prison-folder/federal-reports/are-we-closing-the-school-discipline-gap/AreWeClosingTheSchoolDisciplineGap_FINAL221.pdf Shelf Number: 134942 Keywords: Racial DisparitiesSchool DisciplineSchool SuspensionsStudent Discipline |
Author: Losen, Daniel J. Title: Keeping California's Kids in School: Fewer Students of Color Missing School for Minor Misbehavior Summary: Recently the California Department of Education released new data on school discipline. This report compares this year's data release covering 2012-13 to the data released last year covering 2011-12. We find a reduction in the use of out-of-school suspension for every racial/ethnic group. Specifically, based on the statewide averages for 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, progress was made for every racial/ethnic subgroup toward reducing the rate of out-of-school suspensions (OSS) per 100 students enrolled from the prior year. Data source and limitations: The state and district level data used to construct this report and compare years, include data on every district in California collected by the state and available on the state's Department of Education website. We have conducted the additional analysis on racial gaps and trends over time. We provide that information for every district in a sortable spreadsheet that accompanies this report. The state has discouraged comparisons with reported data from earlier years because the definitions, collection methods and other inconsistencies make such comparisons unreliable. The reduction in state averages suggest that some progress has been made toward reducing the reliance on out-of- school suspensions and the racial gap in disciplinary exclusion is narrowing in California. This report only provides a summary of some of the more significant state and district level improvements. Details: Los Angeles: Center for Civil Rights Remedies, 2014. 9p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 21, 2016 at: http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/resources/projects/center-for-civil-rights-remedies/school-to-prison-folder/summary-reports/keeping-californias-kids-in-school/WithChange.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/resources/projects/center-for-civil-rights-remedies/school-to-prison-folder/summary-reports/keeping-californias-kids-in-school/WithChange.pdf Shelf Number: 138357 Keywords: Racial Disparities School Discipline School Suspensions Student Discipline |
Author: Losen, Daniel J. Title: Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion from School Summary: Does anybody know how many students were suspended from school in their child's district? Should we care? In most schools and districts in the nation, the answer to the first question is that most do not know, even though out-of-school suspension is no longer a measure of last resort in a large number of school districts across the country. As this report will show, many districts are frequently resorting to suspension for violations of even minor school rules. Well over three million children, K-12, are estimated to have lost instructional "seat time" in 2009-2010 because they were suspended from school, often with no guarantee of adult supervision outside the school. That's about the number of children it would take to fill every seat in every major league baseball park and every NFL stadium in America, combined. Besides the obvious loss of time in the classroom, suspensions matter because they are among the leading indicators of whether a child will drop out of school, and because out-of- school suspension increases a child's risk for future incarceration. Given these increased risks, what we don't know about the use of suspensions may be putting our children's futures (and our economy) in jeopardy. Furthermore, the high risk of getting suspended is not borne equally by all students, which raises civil rights issues and questions about fundamental fairness. This report will demonstrate that, while children from every racial group can be found to have a high risk for suspension in some school districts, African American children and children with disabilities are usually at a far greater risk than others. For example, one out of every six enrolled Black students was suspended, compared with one in twenty White students. This national report, based on suspensions of students in K-12 in 2009-2010, represents the first major effort to fill the knowledge gap around school discipline as it stands in thousands of districts in nearly every state. Based on data released in March 2012 by the U.S. Department of Education, we analyze the risk of out-of-school suspension for every racial/ethnic group, as well as for students with and without disabilities. The report begins by providing national- and state-level estimates, but perhaps the most valuable information presented is the detailed analysis of nearly 7,000 school districts from every state. In this national database, using the companion spreadsheets, readers will easily locate the highest suspending school districts for each racial group, and for students with and without disabilities. This report demonstrates that, in most districts, the highest risk for suspension is revealed when the data are disaggregated by race and combined with gender and/or disability status. Details: Los Angeles: Center for Civil Rights Remedies, 2012. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 24, 2016 at: http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/resources/projects/center-for-civil-rights-remedies/school-to-prison-folder/federal-reports/upcoming-ccrr-research/losen-gillespie-opportunity-suspended-2012.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/resources/projects/center-for-civil-rights-remedies/school-to-prison-folder/federal-reports/upcoming-ccrr-research/losen-gillespie-opportunity-suspended-2012.pdf Shelf Number: 138407 Keywords: Racial Disparities School Discipline School Suspensions Student Discipline |
Author: Southern Poverty Law Center Title: The Data Gap: School Policing in Louisiana Summary: Following the tragic 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, school districts across the country grappled with the question: "What makes a school safe?" Many school districts responded by creating or expanding their law enforcement programs or placing school resource officers (SROs) on school grounds and at school-related activities. Law enforcement officials were first placed on school campuses in the early 1950s. Today, 41 percent of the nation's public schools report having an SRO on their campuses, and this number is on the rise. Though the presence of law enforcement in schools has been increasing, there is no evidence that school-based law enforcement make schools safer. Due to a lack of data, inaccurate data, and challenges in accessing data on school policing programs, it is impossible to adequately evaluate SRO program effectiveness. Sound data on school policing programs is needed: 1) to measure the effectiveness of these programs and determine whether taxpayer dollars should be funneled into creating or expanding them; 2) to help evaluate whether schools are complying with federal anti-discrimination laws; and 3) to measure whether schools are safe and welcoming for all students. In the absence of this information, anecdotes - while helpful in rounding out the picture - are the primary influencers of school policing policy, not rigorous research. While school-based law enforcement duties vary across school districts, the primary responsibility of officers on campuses is law enforcement. SROs, however, have also been increasingly called upon to respond to school disciplinary incidents, resulting in harsher consequences for minor misbehaviors by students. Schools are required to collect and report data on key education and civil rights issues - including school policing data such as the number of students referred to law enforcement, the number of students arrested at school-related activities, and the number of sworn law enforcement officers (including SROs) in their district - to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is charged with enforcing certain federal anti-discrimination laws in schools. What's more, school districts and state departments of education are required to publish data on school policing under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Though Louisiana has school data collection laws, these laws have not caught up to federal requirements for the collection and publication of certain student data, including school-based arrests and referrals to law enforcement and the presence of SROs in Louisiana's schools. Through research and public records requests, the SPLC found that local school districts are not accurately and consistently collecting data on their school policing programs, and the data that was collected and reported had discrepancies compared to data reported to the OCR and data collected by law enforcement agencies. This suggests that educators, families, and policymakers lack accurate, basic information about school policing in the state. The Louisiana Legislature should require schools, school districts, and the Louisiana Department of Education to accurately collect and publicly report data on school-based arrests and referrals to law enforcement as already required by federal law. Details: Montgomery, Alabama: Author, 2019. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 24, 2019 at: https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_la_school_policing_final_no_crops.pdf Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_la_school_policing_final_no_crops.pdf Shelf Number: 156620 Keywords: School Crime School Police Officers School Policing Policy School Resource Officers School Safety School Security School Violence Student Discipline |