Stop Tinkering with Negative Discipline Practices and Start Shifting to Positive Ones
By Kate Anderson Foley
December 20, 2020
A recent study by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA confirms what many of us have long suspected: American middle and high schools are losing a shocking number of instructional days to suspension. Using discipline data collected from almost every U.S. school district, the study found that 28 districts lost more than a year of learning to this draconian discipline practice. And what populations were most affected? You guessed it: Black students and students with disabilities were disproportionately deprived of the opportunity to learn in the name of suspension.
I’ve long said that you can have zero tolerance for the behavior but not for the discipline. Meaning, zero tolerance policies have failed because they treat all behavior as the same, dishing out lockstep discipline without taking the time to understand the root cause. Instead, schools should implement restorative practices that appropriately address the egregious behavior while scaffolding the desired conduct so all parties can become whole. Resource officers, time-out rooms, out-of-school suspensions, and expulsions disproportionately impact the neediest students. All of these external mechanisms and tinkering still haven’t addressed the internal shortcomings — namely, the shift to restorative practices and true social-emotional development from the adults on down. If the adults in schools, boards of education, legislators, and so forth can’t see that they are contributing to the larger societal issues because of their preconceptions, then they are doomed to continue the pattern of “us vs. them” and placing a moral judgment on kids rather than getting to the root of the issues.
I was one of those disruptive kids — not because school was hard, but because of what was inside my invisible backpack, namely living in a chaotic household and not having the skills to deal with it all. There are thousands of kids just like me that are sitting in classes without a caring adult to see them for who they are and what life circumstances they bring with them. That is why I continue to advocate for a holistic redesign that, at its core, is intentionally designed and deeply implemented on the principles of restorative justice and social-emotional learning (SEL). By design then, it becomes responsive rather than rigid. It values flexibility in response rather than draconian punishments.
There are many ways to get this ball rolling. One way is with teacher preparation programs. Teachers entering the profession should come out of college with a mindset that understands the influences external factors such as home life, loss of parent, economic insecurity can have on behavior. They also really need a different set of tools — ones that match who our students are now and the lives they live, rather than an outdated, Eurocentric philosophy. Board members need to be trained on restorative practices, SEL, and culturally relevant pedagogy, both as an organizational frame and as the behaviors expected of them and all the people throughout the organization.
In short, we need to stop tinkering.