School Punishments Are Ineffective And Necessary

Racial disparities in school discipline have garnered recent attention in national reports issued by the U.S. Department of Education and Justice (U.S. Department of Education, 2014; Gregory, Hafen, Ruzek, Mikami, Allen, & Pianta, 2016). Suspension rates Black students are two to three times higher than those from other racial and ethnic groups. Various research has documented that Black students remain overrepresented in school discipline sanctions after accounting for their achievement, socioeconomic status, and teacher- and self-reported behavior (Gregory et al, 2016). There is a difference as to the reasons why White students are sent to the office versus Black students. Black students are sent to the office for subjective reasons such as “disrespect” and “perceived threat”, while White students are more than likely to be referred for more objective reasons including, smoking, vandalism, and leaving school without permission. (Gregory, et al, 2016). African Americans and especially African American boys, are more likely to be disciplined and often receive more out-of-school suspensions and expulsions than white students (Todd Rudd, 2014). Suspending students is taking away time from them being in the classroom. Students who receive suspensions, lose instructional time, fall behind on course work, become discouraged, and ultimately drop out…recent research has shown each suspension a student receives can decrease their odds for high graduation by any

The principal’s final verdict was so crushing that it left a lump in my throat. My childhood years of trouble making never caught up to me; I never thought it would. Every year, I would end up in one incident or another, but the result was simply a slap on the wrist. This time, there was no escaping punishment. I was to have in-school suspension for three days.

I plan to establish discipline by warning those students who misbehave at first giving them two chances to act appropriately. If a student still misbehaves, I will cut their privilege to go outside down by five or ten minutes according to the severity of their inappropriate behavior. If a child still misbehaves, I will take the issue to

Out of school suspensions (OSS) are often enforced with the assumption that students receiving the suspension are less likely to repeat the problem behavior in the future. However, this has been proven to be false. Suspending a student for engaging in a certain behavior does not in fact serve as a deterrent from the behavior but as a deterrent from attending school instead. In actuality, receiving just a single suspension can increase the probability of a student experiencing academic failure, school dropout, and involvement in the juvenile justice system. Knowing this, some educators still believe that for many students, suspension can serve as an effective lesson. One of the greatest concerns that educators and administrators face is the matter of classroom management. It is part of their job to ensure a safe, productive and supportive classroom allowing students to learn and grow to their greatest potential. Though there are several strategies gauged towards managing a classroom, the most severe offences often lead to either in or out of school suspension. Some of the largest concerns faced with out of school suspensions is that they are often ineptly applied, used unfairly against students of color and seemingly ineffective at producing better behavior. Also known as exclusionary discipline, the majority of offenses that led to OSS have not been centered around violence but instead emphasised issues of classroom insubordination and defiance. In some rather extreme cases

Often times it’s the student’s needs and the school being unable to meet the student’s needs that lead to the student being disciplined. Kids who are behind academically, and unable to perform at the same level as their peers often act out in frustration or humiliation (Noguera, 2003). Once these students are labelled as difficult, incorrigible, and unteachable they tend to believe these things about themselves and act out more in class which leads to a cycle of discipline that can ultimately lead to permanent expulsion. For some of these students, these continued rule violations lead to run-ins with the police and the criminal justice system. School administrators who are at times frustrated themselves from failed attempts to steer children from a “bad path” don’t realize that in throwing their hands up and giving up on these students, are in a way helping shuttle students from school to the penitentiary (Noguera, 2003).

Zero tolerance policies are the catalyst for the School-to-Prison pipeline. The problem with zero tolerance policies rely on several different factors. Even though, the vision for zero tolerance policies is clear in the sense that safety is a main priority, A ten year study of zero tolerance policies conducted by the American Psychological Association concluded that the use of these overly harsh policies "did not improve school safety." Since these policies are not increasing school safety it is a clear indicator that change in disciplinary methods is necessary. Additionally, these overly harsh policies create racial disparities mainly focused on minorities. The reason for these racial disparities particularly arise from implicit bias. Unfortunately, student of color and minorities are disportionately represented in suspensions, expulsions, and arrests. Exclusionary discipline principles disproportionately lead the youth, particularly minorities, from classrooms to court and prisons. Racial disparities within school’s disciplinary actions is clear when looking at discipline rates. The Civil Rights Data Collection, gathered by the US Department of Education, graphed suspension rates and disparities in a national test sample during 2012. Figure 1 portrays the ratio of white students that constitute for a little more than half of students enrolled in school while black and hispanic students constitute for less than

Studies have also found a correlation between exclusionary discipline and (1) increased school avoidance, (2) decreased academic engagement, (3) an increased rate of dropouts, (4) increased behavioral problems, and (5) increased involvement with the juvenile justice system. School administrators have the right to want to develop a safe climate for their students and teachers and remove threats from their schools. However, serious threats from students are rare. Nearly 60 percent of the suspensions and expulsions administered in HPS in 2009-2010 were administered for school policy violations—a category that includes things like insubordination, profanity, sleeping in class, and truancy—not serious safety concerns like violence against others or weapons.

However, not all theories this subject offers can be applied with a sociological standpoint due to the psychological effects a student undergoes experiencing a harsh policy. Literature provided in support constantly reminds the community about the disparities, the gender factors, minorities, socioeconomic levels, and the ever-growing barriers. Recently, research is further exclaiming the crisis America’s public education system is undergoing. It is becoming apparent how the rise of suspensions and expulsions in middle schools, further affects the future decisions a student makes (Losen, Skiba 2010); further in, the role reversal from being a student to becoming criminal/prisoner. Hence, the research is pure. It further examines and exclaims the damage, zero-tolerance policies have in the education system and students; further on, the penetration into the criminal justice system. Overall, there is a deficit on the in-depth explanations why and what are the internal/external factors that continuously push a student to fail, and further on becoming a number in the criminal justice

The zero tolerance policy has become a national controversy in regards to the solid proven facts that it criminalizes children and seems to catch kids who have no intention of doing harm. Although, there has been substantial evidence to prove that the policies enforced in many schools have gone far beyond the extreme to convict children of their wrongdoing. The punishments for the act of misconduct have reached a devastating high, and have pointed students in the wrong direction. Despite the opinions of administrators and parents, as well as evidence that zero tolerance policies have deterred violence in many public and private schools, the rules of conviction and punishment are unreasonable and should be modified.

A punishment is to serve justice on those who have violated the rules of the community surrounding them, essentially instilling the concept of consequences in hopes of preventing repercussions. In our public education system, the disciplinary system is developed around the idea of in-school-suspension (ISS) or out-of-school-suspension (OSS), where students who have failed to comply with fundamental rules are punished by moving them to an alternate classroom environment or simply making them stay home. The nation has seen a high number of ISS and OSS participants that have remained relatively constant throughout the years. Schools nationwide have been struggling to efficiently improve participant’s social morality through the use of the ISS

The principal of this prestigious school contributes the statistic ratings to lack of stern expectations from the teachers and the school system. Dassler, the principal, wants to not only see these kids off the streets, but he also wants to see these kids succeed in college. Too often, students drop out in low-income based public schools and too often do they get low paying jobs with no job security. While parents support Dassler's new system of punishment statistics, yet again, do not. Studies show that students who were suspended from school did not come back to school and do better, but instead fell further behind which inevitably led to them getting suspended more and sometimes even expelled completely. Surprising, right? Dassler soon realized that suspending students needed to become the absolute last form of punishment. What these students need is guidance and the proper role model. Teachers from Carver have attested that getting students to follow the rules is a simple matter as long as they trust you and you give them some lead

What effect do suspending students really have? Does it have a positive impact on students? When a school suspends a student for misbehaving, does it affect another student? Suspending students have become more and more controversial with new threats and issues within schools, and now with recent shootings and other horrific incidents occurring in schools, some parents and teachers are questioning if suspending these misbehaving students are the right things to do. Although some disagree with suspending students for their actions, schools should suspend misbehaving students because it gives the student time to think about their actions, positively affect the safety for other students’, and it acts as a consequence for the student misbehaving.

In the past legislators sought to protect students in schools by adopting “Zero Tolerance” policies. These policies not only fail to make schools safe or more effective in handling student behavior, they can actually increase the instances of problem behavior and dropout rates (Farberman, 2006). In the past suspensions were given as a last resort measure to let the parties involved know that an infraction was serious. However, today suspensions are often given for less

Zero tolerance polices are defined as a school policy that mandates uniform consequences for specific offences. These predetermined punishments do not take into account any mitigating factors including the circumstances, disciplinary history, or the age of the student (Findlay, 2008, p. 112). This definition will be further examined later in this paper and the inherent flaws in the zero tolerance policy approach will be discussed. Zero tolerance policies stem from the notion that schools are seen to be too lenient towards offenders, and in an effort to reduce the incidence of youth crime, schools should be taking a tough on crime approach to discipline. As stipulated by Kajs (2006), there are three functions of discipline in schools: to maintain the safety of the staff and students, to preserve the decorum of the school, and to develop character. Moreover, disciplinary action can be viewed as ‘retributive, preventative, or rehabilitative’. It can thus be argued that zero tolerance polices take a retributive approach to student conduct (Kajs, 2006).

When implementing a discipline program, it is important that a teacher identify the difference between misbehavior and off task behavior. Misbehavior is a more serious action and should be treated accordingly. Misbehavior includes actions that are pre-meditated, habitual, unsafe, or demeaning. Off-task behavior includes actions like, talking out of turn or with other students, doing activities other than what the teacher has assigned, and lack of following instructions. While both types of behavior cause unwanted classroom distraction and should not be tolerated, there is an important difference between the two that must be identified. In the case of off-task behavior, the strategy to guide the student back on-task may require imposing a consequence as well as making an adjustment to the classroom management plan in order to re-route the student. In the case of misbehavior, imposing a consequence along with the addition of recruiting support from parents or administration may be needed to retrain the behavior.(Ross, 2009)