Expulsions and suspensions have proven to be ineffective policies that disproportionately affect minorities and exclude kids from their right to public education.
In turn, it is time for schools to consider adopting programs like Restorative Justice which improve help keep kids in school and out of juvenile justice.
Suspensions and expulsions: An overview
The number of suspensions and expulsions has more than doubled since 1974 and has continued increasing at an alarming rate in the past decade. This rise is thought to largely be due to a combined increase of zero tolerance policies and police officers in schools, according to research reports by research centers like the Children’s Defense Fund and the Justice Policy Institute.
These policies, though intended to control misbehavior, have proven to cut children off from school, thus putting them at further risk of dropping out and being absorbed into the juvenile justice system. What’s more, the policies have been shown to disproportionately impact minorities.
Time for solutions
Soon after a national study led by an Indiana University professor found that disciplinary policies are ineffective and unfair to minorities, the U.S. Department of Justice and Education Department released a letter calling for schools to implement practical solutions to the issue.
Several states have been using various strategies to decrease the number of suspensions and expulsions while improving a child’s access to education.
School Resource Officers
School Resource Officers have been shown to increase the number of suspensions, expulsions and arrests in schools, while not definitively decreasing crime. Essentially, putting officers in schools relies on law enforcement to handle disruptive students, which puts them at risk for ending up in the criminal justice system.
Decreasing school police officer presence in favor of alternative methods can decrease the amount of exclusionary discipline while improving a child’s education, according to research by the Justice Policy Institute and evidence from schools that reformed their programs.
Denver Public schools did this by replacing some of their school police officers with policies centered upon restorative justice.
Restorative Justice
Restorative Justice is a movement that has been taking off at K-12 schools around the country. It encourages open discussion about incidents with all involved parties in order to teach students how to resolve conflicts.
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When Denver adopted the movement, the schools system’s number of suspensions and expulsions decreased by 33 and 54 percent respectively, while its number of referrals to law enforcement was cut by more than 50 percent. Similarly, in California, schools all around the state began adopting restorative justice and other policies, finding their number of suspensions significantly decreasing.
Baltimore also spread restorative justice policies, modifications to the student code of conducts and other tactics throughout schools, and the state’s suspensions dropped by half.
Education for faculty
Teachers and faculty have a huge influence on implementing disciplinary policies. This makes it crucial that they have a full understanding of the negative aspects of these policies as well as their unequal impact on minority students.
There are several programs that schools have recently adopted, including the Making the Most of Classroom Interactions (MMCI) program and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), which aim to educate teachers while holding them accountable for proper discipline.
MMCI establishes regularly sessions with teachers in which they discuss student interactions and are coached on how to improve them, including their own homework assignments to practice these interactions.
CLASS is similar to MMCI but actually has a scoring system in place to assign a value to teacher-student interactions, providing suggestions for teacher improvement when the scores are low.
Though the programs are still young, states have begun to see improvements after adopting them. Georgia’s implementation of a 10-session MMCI program resulted in more positive student-teacher interactions, and an evaluation by the University of Virginia found that CLASS did the same, while also increasing classroom organization and student support.
Our take
Exclusionary policies, like suspensions and expulsions, have been proven ineffective and harmful to students because they exclude them from a necessary education. The presence of school resource officers has increased the number of arrests and excluded even more children from the classroom.
As a promising alternative, schools across the United States should consider adopting restorative justice policies, as well as educating teachers on conflict resolution methods, to lessen the number of students being excluded.
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